Chen, Soong go toe-to-toe

The 2004 presidential election seems to have started ahead of schedule, as potential contenders for the next presidency seized the opportunity of the upcoming Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral elections to attack their rivals.

PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), who recently said he would give up his bid to run for the 2004 presidency if President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) would acknowledge the "one China" principle, yesterday challenged Chen to show the people what he has achieved during the past-two and-a-half years of his tenure and stop treating the presidency as a stage for showboating.

Soong said Chen scores only 30 marks for his performance on a 100-point scale, because up to 70 percent of college graduates have problems finding a job.

"Flying on the president's designated plane, [Chen] has toured around the island to put on a show but he has never been able to resolve the problems of the people," Soong said when stumping for one of his party's candidates for Taipei City Councilor, Lu Ting-hua (呂庭華).

"You hold the title of the `president of the ROC' but you aren't doing anything that a ROC president should be doing," Soong said.

Soong was trying to hit back at Chen for allegations that Chen had made during a campaign rally for DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) Friday night.

Chen accused Soong of soliciting "a stage, title and resources" by offering to back out of the 2004 presidential race and even visit China on behalf of the DPP government on the condition that the DPP deals with cross-strait relations according to the "one China" principle.

The PFP has argued that the ROC Constitution has been written under the "one China" principle, and that this "China" refers to the ROC, rather than the PRC.

Brushing off Soong's proposition, Chen, at Friday's event, asked Soong not to portray himself as a "great man" and said that it was none of his business as to whether Soong wanted to run for president.

According to Chen, a person must "love Taiwan" and recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state, not as a part of China, in order to be qualified to become Taiwan's envoy to China.

Soong yesterday fought back saying that Chen tends to judge whether a person loves Taiwan according to where he was born.

"The phrase `love Taiwan' is always used during elections. The only criterion they use to decide whether a person loves Taiwan or not is whether this person was born in Taiwan," said Soong, who was born in China's Hunan province.

According to Chen's logic, those people who migrated from China to Taiwan after 1949 are still considered mainlanders today, though they have lived on this island for four generations, Soong said.

If this logic is valid, Soong continued, Chen has "never loved Taipei," because Chen -- a former mayor of Taipei -- was not born in Taipei but in Tainan.

"Are you not the president of the ROC? Why do you always seek to divide the nation across ethnic lines?" Soong asked.