Mar 18, 2008, 3:58 GMT
Taipei - Some 500 foreign observers will arrive in Taiwan to monitor Saturday's presidential election , authorities said Tuesday.
The observers are invited by the Foreign Ministry and the two political parties vying in the election. They are mostly foreign parliamentarians and scholars.
'The Foreign Ministry has invited 280 foreign observers who form 57 observation delegations from 30 countries,' ministry spokeswoman Phoebe Yeh said.
Former French prime minster Edith Cresson is among those invited.
'The Foreign Ministry will arrange for them to visit the Central Election Commission, the two political parties involved in the election, campaign rallies and the vote-counting centre,' she said.
The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the largest opposition party, Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT), have also invited observations from abroad.
The election will choose a successor to President Chen Shui-bian, of the pro-independence DPP, who will step down on May 20 after having served the maximum two terms.
The two candidates are DPP's Frank Hsieh and KMT's Ma Ying-jeou.
According to public opinion polls in recent months, Ma leads Hsieh by about 20 percentage points, but Hsieh claims his gap with Ma has narrowed to about five percentage points.
The KMT, made up of former mainlanders, used to seek Taiwan-China unification but has toned down its policy to advocate peace and economic integration between Taiwan and China.
Taiwan and China split in 1949 when the KMT government lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up its government in exile. Despite the opening of cross-Strait exchanges in the late 1980s, Taiwan and China still regard each other as enemies.
Analysts said Ma is more popular because he has pledged immediate opening of trade and sea and air links with China, which many voters believe can revive Taiwan's sagging economy.
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