Ma foresees electoral difficulties with the PFP

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday in an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times that the KMT's split with the PFP would make it difficult for his party to win re-election nationally.

With just three days before voters go to the polls, the KMT mayor also continued to deny he had spied for the party while he was a student at Harvard.

Ma said that all the evidence suggesting he had taken photos or written reports for the KMT government had been shown to be incorrect. For example, Ma said, last August a city council member said he had a photo from a Harvard academic, but it turned out to have been taken while he was studying at university in Taiwan.

Regarding accusations by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) that his close ties with Hong Kong, where he was born, had given him "Hong Kong feet," Ma said he had visited the territory twice and was working with its government on several projects.

He said that beginning in 1999, Taipei had worked with Hong Kong on the subway system and on construction projects. Hong Kong and Taipei have held two forums and exchanges have taken place on a number of levels, he said.

Ma visited Hong Kong in March 1999 and February last year. On the second visit, Ma's host was Ye Guohua (葉國華), then special adviser to Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hua (董建華). Ma said his meeting with Tung was not planned.

Ma said he did not criticize Chen during his meeting with Tung and other leaders in Hong Kong. Rather, he said, he urged them to look at Chen's policies such as the "five no's" policy delivered in his inauguration speech. Ma also told Hong Kong media that "one country, two systems" was fine for Hong Kong, but not for Taiwan, he said.

Upon returning to Taipei, Ma said he first briefed Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰). Although, according to Ma, Chen would have been happy to see him, Ma believed the tension between the KMT and DPP was too high at this time, following the government's decision to cease construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.

Ma said he had not realized how upset Chen was, even though they had discussed the matter for five minutes at a funeral they attended.

To regain power, Ma said, the KMT has already implemented many of his suggestions after Chen's victory in 2000, including the direct election of the party chairman and the abolition of reserved seats on the Central Standing Committee. But, Ma said, the KMT had to continue democratizing and making its finances more transparent.

According to Ma, the KMT no longer has much cash. As a result, Ma said he was trying to run a frugal campaign and had refused to solicit contributions from companies or private individuals. Ma expressed his sympathy for the Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英) campaign in Kaohsiung, which was being conducted on an even tighter budget.

Ma said that it would be difficult for the KMT to win re-election nationally as long as the split continued between the KMT and the PFP. He was encouraged that PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) had finally come out in support of the KMT's candidate, Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英), in Kaohsiung, but the old problems that caused the original split had not disappeared.

He expressed his sadness about the advertisement that appeared in a Chinese-language newspaper showing him with Sophie Wang (王筱嬋), an assistant to a DPP lawmaker who has now been expelled from his party after eloping with Wang to the US for three months.