Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A Taiwan man who blamed a bad economy for his job loss shot President Chen Shui-bian before drowning himself, prosecutors said at the conclusion of a 17-month probe of the election eve assassination attempt.

Authorities concluded the president didn't stage his own shooting and that a single man carried it out with no collaborators, the Supreme Prosecutor's Office said. A United Daily News report today quoted the alleged gunman's wife as casting doubt on her husband's guilt.

``I don't think (the prosecutors' report) is going to convince anybody,'' said Allen Choate, Hong Kong-based representative for the non-profit Asia Foundation. ``The public loves a conspiracy theory.''

Chen's second four-year term has been overshadowed by the shooting, which divided the island of about 23 million people and led to weeks of street protests and lawsuits challenging the election result. Chen, 54, defeated then-Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan by a margin of less than 30,000 of 13 million votes on March 20, 2004, a day after he and Vice President Annette Lu were wounded by gunshot.

Opposition parties alleged Chen may have staged the shooting to win sympathy votes. The weapon has never been found. Police in March said Chen Yi-hsiung, a 63-year-old unemployed roofer, may have shot the president before drowning himself 10 days later when videotapes showed him running from the scene.

``There's no evidence anyone else was involved,'' Prosecutor General Wu Ying-chao said today in Taipei. ``Hopefully, the public can return to harmony.''

Shooting Probes

The president and Lu were wounded when shots were fired at their motorcade in the southern city of Tainan. The president was grazed in the abdomen and Lu was wounded in one knee.

Many questions were raised in the public as the island's television stations replayed footage of the scene for weeks after the assassination attempt. There was speculation about a possible anonymous telephone call to Chen's security detail warning about an assassination attempt hours before the shooting.

There were also questions about why the president was sent to one hospital instead of another that was closer after he was shot. The shooting and public outcry for an impartial probe prompted the Taiwan government to invite Henry Lee, a U.S.-based forensic scientist who worked for the defense in O.J. Simpson's murder trial.

Lee and three other U.S. crime-scene specialists studied the case. His investigation found the shootings weren't done by a professional and that the gun and bullets were locally made. Lee drew no conclusions about the motive for the shooting in his report to the government last year.

``The evidence is all circumstantial,'' said Emile Sheng, associate professor of political science at Soochow University in Taipei. ``The bureaucracy wants to have closure on this case before President Chen's term ends.''

March Breakthrough

Disputes over the shooting led to two unsuccessful attempts by the main opposition Nationalist Party to void the election result in court. A special panel set up by the opposition- dominated parliament to probe the shooting recommended in January that a new election be held, saying the shooting may have been set up to manipulate polls.

``This is like a crime novel, finding a dead man as the killer,'' Stephen Chen, convener of the national security division at the National Policy Foundation, a Nationalist think tank, said in response to the probe's conclusion today. ``We can't accept it. Can Taiwan accept this?''

Police at one point traced 52 guns. In a breakthrough last March, they said Chen Yi-hsiung left notes to family members that said ``things turned bad after Chen became president'' and lamented his family's inability to sell their house.

Chen presided over record unemployment and the island's worst-ever recession early in his first term.

Questions Remain

Police were led to Chen Yi-hsiung, who lived in Tainan, after tracing a locally made gun and bullets he bought through underground arms makers and dealers in Taiwan, Lin Teh-hua, a deputy at Taiwan's criminal bureau, said in March.

The case was made public when Chen Yi-hsiung's family broke months of silence and told police that he pulled the trigger, according to Lin. There were videotapes broadcast by television showing a suspect wearing a yellow jacket running from the scene.

Chen Yi-hsiung burned his yellow jacket. After his death, his family initially decided to keep quiet, destroying his suicide notes and having his body cremated on March 30, with the cause of death listed as accidental drowning.

The man's wife, Lee Shu-chiang, said she was coerced by police into making a televised statement implicating her husband, the United Daily News reported today. Her husband never said he carried out the shooting, nor did he hint to family members that he shot the president, the report cited her as saying.

``It has become a political case,'' Soochow University's Sheng said. ``Nobody will change what they believe or don't believe because of today's announcement.''

To contact the reporter on this story: James Peng in Taipei at jpeng7@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 17, 2005 04:32 EDT