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.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past