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Editorial: The only choice to make

We learned yesterday that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) intends to embark upon a round-the-island trip to promote the DPP government 's achievements as a forerunner to the campaign for the presidential election next March. Our immediate reaction was one of puzzlement. "What achievements?" became a common refrain heard around the newsroom. Shortly, we expect it to be heard all around Taiwan.

And we hardly think we fall into the category of biased unification-supporting media, whose mem-bers were all trained by the KMT, who were censured by the DPP's Hong Chi-chang (洪奇昌) yesterday, since it is no secret that we hope that there is a special circle of hell reserved for unification supporters. But poring over Chen's record with the exegetical fervor of Talmudic scholars as we might, the "concrete achievements" which Hong spoke of prove elusive.

What we remember in the last three years has been the economy dipping, not Chen's fault but not sufficiently refuted by the DPP at the time, the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant fiasco, utterly mis-managed by the DPP, despite their many years of manipulating popular support when in opposition, the farmers and fisherman's associations turnaround, still to be resolved, the embarrassing backpedaling over Chen's "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait remarks, half-baked privatization, hubris over SARS -- about the only thing we could come up with as an unequivocal plus was that China hasn't invaded yet.

Even Chen yesterday was limited to saying that Taiwan's economy hadn't done as badly as others. What a slogan!

Given this lackluster performance, the best we can hope for is that Chen doesn't say anything too embarrassing. What is more to the point is that if Chen must be the DPP's candidate in the next election -- as the incumbent he could hardly be otherwise -- how his campaign can possibly be rescued from the mediocrity tending toward failure of his performance in office. A strong running mate might be an advantage, someone perhaps like Chen Ding-nan (陳定南), a running mate anyway who does not embarrass us with asinine stupidities about Taiwan being like Hello Kitty in its exercise of "soft power."

If the green camp hopes to focus on Chen's achievements for its election campaign then it is in trouble -- it might as well try to breath in a vacuum. There is only one reason to vote for Chen and that is that he is not about to sell out Taiwan to China, the all-but-expressed intention of his blue-camp rivals with their love of the "one China" policy. For the green camp the campaign has to be negative -- this is sad but inevitable.

What Taiwanese have to be asked to make is what is known in the rich lexicon of American politics as a clothes-peg vote, a vote that stinks so badly you need a clothes-peg on your nose as you make it. Chen might be vacillating, he might lack direction, but at least we know he is not going in one particular direction -- into China's crushing embrace. That is where the blue camp would lead us, bringing all the loss of liberties now threatening the people of Hong Kong to the people of Taiwan.

It is not that Chen must be supported, rather that China must be held at bay. This must be made crystal clear to voters, no matter what accusations of "dirty fighting" there might be. For Taiwan's liberties and democratic system this is a life-or-death struggle. The only strategy that matters is the one that works.
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