President Chen Shui-bian's (
They said Lee's influence may have declined, but the ex-president will continue to play a role on the political stage because Chen cannot afford to lose the backing from Lee's staunch pro-Taiwan supporters.
"Chen will dominate the Chen-Lee relationship [following the election,] but that does not mean that Lee won't have any political weight. He never fails to attract the media's attention with his pro-Taiwan opinions. It is impossible for Chen to overlook Lee's influence in the media," said Emile Sheng (盛治仁), a political science professor at Soochow University.
Over the past two years, the public has sometimes been confused about who is the real head of the state.While Chen may be the president, he sometimes appears to be overshadowed by his predecessor, and some of the DPP's policies have been adjusted to garner Lee's approval.
The 80-year-old Lee has been a popular figure since last summer, when he re-entered politics by founding the TSU.
The small pro-Taiwan group -- which has helped Chen hold onto power in the face of the pro-unification opposition -- has since served as Lee's political stage.
Advocating his "Taiwan-first" principle with a strong sense of mission, Lee is tremendously popular with a core group of followers. Lee has openly criticized the DPP government's China policy and the reform proposals introduced to overhaul the debt-laden grassroots financial cooperatives.
Amid the government's backpedaling on the reforms of the grassroots institutions -- which triggered a massive street demonstration -- Lee intensified the public's dissatisfaction with the DPP by attacking the administration, saying it was run by "inexperienced officials" who know nothing but how to run election campaigns.
The relationship between Lee and Chen often evokes the power plays between a king and his first minister.
When the two leaders appeared together to stump for DPP Mayor Frank Hsieh (
Insiders in the DPP said that Lee may have to stay quiet for a while because "Chen's leading role in the pan-green force was consolidated in view of the election results."
"The situation is that Lee needs Chen more than Chen needs Lee. Lee's political resources have largely dwindled, leaving him with no choice but to form an alliance with Chen," said a DPP official who requested anonymity.
It has been widely reported since the election that Lee's popularity has faded, given the TSU's lackluster performance in the campaign.
The TSU nominated seven candidates for city councilors each in Taipei and Kaohsiung cities, but only two were elected in Kaohsiung. The party obtained only 3.7 percent of the votes in the capital, and 4.55 percent in Kaohsiung.
Although political academics agreed with the DPP official that Chen will become the top leader in the pan-green alliance after the election, they said Lee will continue to make his voice heard.
Chiu Hei-yuan (
Analysts also pointed out it is unfair to conclude that Lee's popularity has died down because of a defeat in a single election, and what's more, "the election for the city council does not change the political atmosphere nationwide," Sheng said.
Last December, the four-month-old TSU grabbed 13 seats in the 225-member legislature in its first campaign, thanks to Lee's support.
The distribution of the votes indicated that Lee's outspoken style and his pro-Taiwan speeches appealed more to residents in the south and in rural areas.
TSU officials don't think that Lee's influence has faded because they realize that city dwellers were never the party's major supporters.
Other factors such as the party's weak candidates and its unclear direction also attributed to the party's failure in this election.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods