Chen Shui-bian
Even though Soong lost the election this time, the results show that he performed well in the campaign, losing the race to Chen by merely 312,805 votes, and garnering the largest number of votes in 15 counties and municipalities -- including Taipei City, where he grabbed over 30,000 votes more than A-bian.
Soong also stood second in nine other counties and municipalities, many of them in the south. From this, we can see that Soong owns a larger political territory across Taiwan than A-bian does.
Since he left the KMT, Soong has fought a war on two fronts: against the KMT and the DPP. Soong also emerged miraculously well from the Chung Hsing financial scandal, which one would have thought would have been a lethal prescription for a politician. If not for the "Lee Yuan-tseh factor" and the deplorable scream it prompted from Zhu, the final outcome of the election could have been even more puzzling.
It is still too early to analyze whether Soong garnered cross-party support in winning more than 4.6 million votes. But he obviously won support across ethnic lines, especially among the majority Taiwanese-Hokkien. This is an unprecedented outcome for a mainlander political figure.
The so-called "Soong phenomenon" has opened a new page in the history of Taiwan's political development. It is also a significant revelation for all politicians.
Chen used to call Soong "an opponent to be feared." Chen expressed disagreement with Soong's deeply conspiratory character, but the prowess Soong has demonstrated across ethnic and geographical lines has proved that he has the qualifications to become -- for A-bian -- "an opponent to be respected."
However, for the KMT, Soong is nothing less than "an opponent to be hated." If he did not run in the election, Lien Chan (連戰) might not have lost -- or at least not so miserably. If Soong had agreed to a Lien-Soong ticket instead of being so keen to be "top dog" himself, the KMT would have reaped much more than Lien's wretched 2.93 million votes, even if the number might not have reached 7.5 million (Soong's and Lien's votes combined).
The KMT has shooed away many political talents over the past 50 years, but its fallout with Soong is triggering the most serious schism within the party since it came to Taiwan in 1949. Whether overtly or covertly, the KMT has in fact thoroughly split in two. Previous rifts caused by the departures of Chen Li-an (
If it were not for the thoroughly split KMT facing A-bian, he would have had almost no chance of winning. Thanks to Soong's independent bid, Chen was given an unprecedentedly vulnerable KMT as his opponent. As a result, Lien's campaign was crushed and an almost century-old political party was pushed out of power. Soong was the greatest contributor to this outcome.
Soong will perhaps go down as a traitor in the eyes of some KMT members. But in the context of Taiwan history, he accidentally did a great service to democracy. How can A-bian not thank him for that?
Wang Chien-chuang is president of The Journalist magazine.
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