Mon, Dec 16, 2002 page8

• Editorial: The KMT's ultimatum to Soong

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  The agreement to cooperate between KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and the PFP's James Soong (宋楚瑜) Saturday is not the beginning of the end for the DPP, nor even the end of the beginning for pan-blue cooperation, disappointing though this might be for the pro-China media to admit. There is, in the old saying, "many a slip twixt cup and lip" and a huge amount of compromise on the part of rampaging and uncompromising egos is going to have to be pulled off before this child is safely delivered.

  For those of us less enamored with the blue camp and with a perhaps more realistic view of Taiwan's political dystopia, the immediate reaction was, in the worlds of baseball great Yogi Berra, "deja vu all over again." Yes, folks we have been here before -- at least twice.

  For example, the two parties were supposed to cooperate in the races for county commissioners for the election in December last year as well as hammer out some kind of vote-equalization strategies for the legislative candidates. Such attempts at cooperation were laughable and "pan-blue unity" for all the sweet talk, became an oxymoron as inter-party relations became as edifying as two dogs fighting under a rug.

  Then we saw the pathetic attempt to cooperate over the recent Kaohsiung mayoral election. True, cooperation of a sort was finally achieved, but only because Soong couldn't find his own candidate -- even his own vice chairman dropped out of the race.

  Not the most impressive of track records.

  Of course there are many who will say that the blue camp has learned its lesson, that united it wins office and divided it gets pasted by the DPP -- something that has been apparent ever since the Taipei mayoral election of 1994. But whether this is enough to rein in the giant egos remains to be seen. True connoisseurs of Taiwan's political freak show will now look forward to the clowns beating each other about the heads with inflated opinion polls before slipping on the banana skins of their own shady pasts and dubious relationships.

  As usual it is what is deemed "not necessary to deal with right at this moment" that is the essence of the problems surrounding pan-blue cooperation, namely, as Abbott and Costello would put it, who's on first. Is it going to be Lien-Soong or Soong-Lien? We have almost a year of watching these two arm-wrestle over this question. But the result is hardly a cliff-hanger. Soong-Lien is simply never going to happen. Lien has no intention of playing second fiddle again after four -- very undistinguished -- years of it before. Is Soong willing to do so, or is he going to wreck the blue camp's chances a second time? Note the interesting use to which Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) current popularity -- though is he really popular outside Taipei? -- is being put.

  Already we are seeing polls that suggest a Lien-Ma pairing is a winner. Now polls in Taiwan are almost invariably corrupt, being often the tools of political factions trying to show support for their questionable agendas. So polls showing support for a Lien-Ma pairing are best seen, not as a reflection of what the public really wants but as a message to James Soong that the KMT is quite prepared if need be to go it alone. In which case Soong would have to as well. The implication is that, though this might deny the top job to the KMT, a Lien-Ma pairing would probably take enough votes off Soong to keep him out of office as well. And Soong is of an age where he can't afford another four years in the wilderness. So forget what the polls claim to show, instead see them for what they are -- the KMT's ultimatum Soong can't refuse.
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