On Sept. 20, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) formally registered his intent to launch a presidential petition and announced that National Taiwan University professor emeritus Lin Ruey-shiung (林瑞雄) would be his running mate in January’s presidential election.
After the Central Election Committee (CEC) posted the formal announcement for next year’s election, many presidential aspirants came forward to get the forms they need to start a signature collection drive, but the only candidates who can really stir things up in this election are Soong and Lin.
According to the rules, anyone who wants to enter the presidential election is required to collect the signatures of at least 1.5 percent of the eligible voters in the previous legislative elections, which in this case is 257,695 signatures.
However, Soong has raised the bar by setting his own goal of 1 million signatures, making it clear that he wants to use his candidacy to raise the party’s profile in the legislative elections and garner more votes for its candidates, thereby bringing the party over the 5 percent threshold for entry into the legislature.
A quick look at the people coming out to show their support for Soong as a presidential candidate shows that they are all PFP legislators. In addition, the media coverage they have received has far exceeded that given to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative candidates.
Deep green supporters are quite optimistic about Soong and Lin’s petition, because they think if Soong runs, the pan-blue camp will be divided, effectively helping DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) win the election. President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) supporters seem to share that view, yet the public polls so far paint a different picture.
Right now Soong’s support rate is about 15 percent, and after cross-referencing those results, a number of polls have indicated that Soong’s supporters from the pan-green camp outnumber his supporters from the pan-blue camp.
Interpreting the polls this way does not show that Soong’s candidacy has split the pan-blue camp, but it could be extrapolated to mean that pan-green supporters support Soong because they want him to run, believing that his candidacy would weaken support for Ma
However, we have to ask whether a Soong candidacy would truly help Tsai. Several indicators point in exactly the opposite direction.
First, the biggest threat to Ma’s re-election campaign is that the passion his supporters once had has waned so much that they might be disinclined to vote. However, Soong’s election bid actually worries Ma’s supporters — generating the sort of concern that could be utilized as a mobilizing force to consolidate Ma’s support base.
Second, Soong has successfully diverted a great deal of media attention, including exposure that would have been given to Tsai.
The executive director of Ma’s campaign office, King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), has employed the same method to divert the media focus from Tsai.
For example, King deliberately followed Tsai to the US in an attempt to disrupt her trip, effectively claiming a lot of the media coverage on her visit for his own trip. Extensive coverage of Soong has also caused the media to lose focus, diverting crucial coverage that should have concentrated on the two full-fledged presidential candidates — Ma and Tsai — to Soong’s purported presidential bid.
Third, Soong’s bid has served to accentuate the ambiguous, hesitant and indecisive nature of Tsai’s personality. Because Soong has no burden to carry, he has been willing to speak out and say what’s on his mind ever since he announced his intent to run, and his criticisms of Ma have been much more pointed than Tsai’s, which causes both neutral voters and DPP supporters to increasingly feel that their candidate is not aggressive enough.
At this point, much of the debate about whom Soong’s election bid will ultimately benefit is confined to the realm of speculation. The PFP has given Soong the opportunity to register a petition, but does the party really want him in the presidential office? The answer to that question remains unclear, but the 45-day petition period has certainly provided PFP legislators with an opportunity to interact more with voters.
Once the Nov. 5 deadline comes and Soong turns in his hundreds of thousands of signatures to the CEC, no one will be able to stop him from running for president. However, if he were to instead announce that he is not running and throw his support behind Ma and the KMT instead, it would provide yet another climax in the lead up to the real election between Ma and Tsai.
If that happens, the pan-blue camp would have kissed and made up, supporters would be filled with emotion and Soong could use the momentum to tell his supporters to vote for Ma in the presidential election, but for the PFP in the legislative election.
Then, just as the curtain comes down on the final act of “Soong for President,” we will undoubtedly be subjected to another campaign seeking to get Soong elected to the legislature.
Jan Shou-jung is a freelance writer.
Translated by Kyle Jeffcoat
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