One day after his nomination as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate, President Chen Shui-bian (
One important reason that Lu was chosen, despite doubts in the party and outside it about her ability to draw voters who are not traditional DPP supporters, is the rising popular support for Chen in the opinion polls.
Various polls show Chen catching up or even gaining a lead. Even the campaign headquarters of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
Under the circumstances, Chen obviously feels much more confident about not relying on his running mate to win brownie points from the voters. While choosing a new partner may bring in new votes, it also comes with risks associated with the unpredictability of a new partnership.
Moreover, while Lu may have been a somewhat controversial figure in the past, she has made a tremendous effort in the past year to change her style. Her level of cooperation with and strong sense of loyalty to Chen have convinced the president to keep her as his running mate for the sake of stability and harmony within the party.
With the return of most of the old faces from the last election, except for New Party presidential nominee Li Ao (李敖) and vice presidential nominee Elmer Feng (馮滬祥) -- whose absence surely pleases most sane people in Taiwan -- the 2004 presidential election is looking more and more like a class reunion.
However, things are different in many ways. First, Lien and Soong, who in the last election ran respectively as KMT and independent candidates, have joined forces this time. They hope that by teaming up, they will win all the votes garnered by each in the last election, which would essentially guarantee the pan-blue camp an election win.
Unfortunately for the pan-blue camp, things might not work out that way. Many voters will, as they should, examine the performance of Lien and Soong, as well as their parties' performance, over the past four years.
In terms of their performance, Lien and Soong do not have much to brag about. For one thing, the KMT's ill-gotten party assets, which were a major issue in the last election, remain an unresolved issue. Moreover, the voters can see for themselves how the pan-blue camp has abused its legislative majority to block the policy initiatives of the Chen government. The pan-blue camp is having a tough time learning to be the opposition.
Even more important is the uncertainty people feel about how the government would be run if Lien and Soong were elected. After all, Taiwan has never had a president and vice president who belonged to different parties. With the KMT and PFP having trouble working together in the presidential campaign, it is hard to imagine how things would work out if they were elected.
In contrast, Chen and Lu offer comparative stability and predictability -- issues of importance to the moderate voters who will probably decide the election. Moreover, it is not hard to see that the DPP has shown much more progress in learning how to be a ruling party than the KMT and PFP have shown in learning how to be the opposition.
Under the circumstances, the only thing that is certain is that the election will be very tight.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS