Lien Chan announces election campaign team

Vice president and KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan (3s戰) formally introduced his campaign team to the public yesterday with a show of force including a group of more than 200 Executive Yuan officials, legislators and heavyweight supporters from the private sector.

Supporters clapped and shouted cheers of "Lien Chan, get elected!" Lien dubbed his campaign staff the "team of the nation, (國家的1庤?)."

"This is the best and most experienced team," he said.

Lien appointed Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (?y揪鬙-) as chairman of his campaign committee, while outgoing foreign minister Jason Hu (-J志強) has taken the post of campaign manager.

Hu last week offered to resign from his Cabinet post to concentrate on the election -- a decision that is expected to be approved tomorrow.

The presidential election next March will be "a struggle between party politics and party disintegration, between social stability and turbulence," Wang said, referring to independent presidential candidate James Soong's (宋楚瑜) campaign policy to form a non-partisan government.

Hu made a direct appeal to KMT members who have been vacillating in deciding whether to jump into the Soong or Lien camps. "Don't hesitate, join us," he said.

KMT secretary-general Huang Kun-hui (黃昆輝), who took up his new post just last week, said he has already taken the initiative in this regard. "I have paid a visit to both senior advisor to the president Wu Po-hisung (吳伯雄) and former Kaohsiung mayor Wu Tun-yi (吳敦義). But they asked to keep what was said in the meetings confidential," he said. "But it sounded as if they had not made up their minds."

Both KMT heavyweights are reported to have been wavering between Lien and Soong.

Asked what plans he has after taking over as campaign manager, Hu said one of his jobs will be to improve the public accessibility of Lien and his running-mate, premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長).

"I have worked with them closely for a long time. To me their personalities are quite different from the impressions some people have about them," Hu said. "My job will be helping people to better understand them."

The KMT's huge organizational clout at various levels of society in Taiwan is soon to be mobilized and could become the determining factor in the election, said one KMT official.

"After the three major camps of presidential candidates engage fully each other, people will discover that all of them have some short-comings," said Huang Cheng-hsiung (黃正雄), newly installed KMT deputy secretary-general and director of the party's organizational affairs department.

"If all candidates are scoring more or less equal points by criticizing each other, then organizational mobilization can make a big difference," he said.

The KMT -- which has been the ruling party for all of the more than five decades it has spent in Taiwan -- has always been seen as strong in its grassroots organizational skills and its capacity for mobilization through local networks.

"We have not moved yet," Huang said. "When we start moving, it will be a lot different."

When asked for an estimate of how much money will be spent on campaigning, Wang said he did not have an exact idea, but was sure that it would be far more than the ceiling of NT$300 million stipulated by the Central Election Committee.

Lien's campaign headquarters will be at the intersection of Taipei's Jenai Road and Chienkuo South Road, at what used to be the offices of the KMT-run China Broadcasting Corp radio station.