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Editorial: Kaohsiung voters the losers

Exactly nine days before election day, PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) on Thursday finally voiced his support for the KMT's Kaohsiung mayoral candidate, Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英). For someone with a reputation for being cunning and politically astute, Soong's performance in the pan-blue camp's efforts to field joint candidates has been wishy-washy to say the least.

Soong has lost out big time. He's not getting any gratitude for waiting until almost the last minute to change his position. The KMT has paid some lip service to him, but it must be seething that he held out for so long. Even on Wednesday, Soong was saying that he remained undecided about whether to support Huang.

His change of heart won't endear him to former interior minister turned independent candidate Chang Po-ya (張博雅), whom the PFP had previously endorsed. She has been performing poorly in opinion polls in recent months, consistently trailing far behind Huang, whose support is now in the 20 to 30 percent range. But Soong's promise to support her must have played a role in her decision to run. Now she's been left holding the bag.

Soong apparently decided that backing Chang, for all its pluses, was outweighed by the risk he could be blamed for the pan-blue camp's defeat in the Kao-hsiung race. That would have certainly jeopardized his chance of becoming the camp's presidential candidate in 2004.

After all, Soong's decision to back Chang in the first place was part of an effort to set up the chess board for the 2004 election. If Chang won as an independent backed by the PFP, she would have been able to draw on her supporters to back the pan-blue ticket in 2004. That would have helped the PFP balance the drawing power of the KMT's rising star, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), in terms of political influence and support each party could give the 2004 candidate. Since Soong has far greater popular support than KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰), he has good reasons to argue that he should be the pan-blue camp's candidate.

Voters in Kaohsiung have good reason to feel offended by not only Soong's performance, but that of the entire pan-blue camp. During his press conference on Thursday, Soong justified his flip-flop by claiming that winning Saturday's election is his top priority and respecting the popular will takes precedence. But to many people it appears that the only thing that matters to the pan-blue camp about next Saturday's elections are what impact they will have on the 2004 campaign. Which candidate would actually do a better job as Kaohsiung mayor appeared to be the last thing on anyone's mind among the pan-blue powers that be.

In fact, the Kaohsiung citizens should feel appalled by the fact that two out of three mayoral candidates that both Lien and Soong thought about jointly endorsing had virtually nothing to do with the pan-blue camp until now -- or even anything in common with it. Politics does make for strange bedfellows -- but the pan-blue camp appears willing to go to extremes to prove the validity of this adage. This makes one wonder just exactly what was the criteria being used to determine potential candidates? Anyone not from the DPP? Anyone who dislikes the DPP government?
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