Pan-blue leaders shake hands amid doubts

Although Lien had publicly ruled out a KMT joint ticket, Chen said Lien should team up with Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for the 2004 presidential election, saying that Lien had improved his image and Ma had consolidated his support.

Lien has long been perceived as a politician who is overly rigid and who uses insipid and dull campaign language. But a recent media poll has suggested that, in comparison with Chen Shui-bian, Soong and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Lien had managed to boost his own image and received the highest approval rating from poll respondents for rallying for his party in the recent Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral and city councilor elections.

Ma won his re-election bid in the recent Taipei mayoral election with 64 percent of the vote.

"Although Ma has just been re-elected as the Taipei Mayor and is in an inconvenient position to comment on [a Lien-Ma ticket], I am sure that the Lien-Ma ticket is the one that would defeat Chen Shui-bian in the 2004 presidential election," Chen Hung-chang said.

Saying that "one plus one does not always necessarily equal two," Chen stressed that the KMT should stand on its own feet and field its own ticket for the next presidential election, instead of relying on cooperation with the PFP.

When asked whether his view ran counter to the pan-blue camp's goals and could thus cause another pan-blue-camp split and cost them the next presidential election, Chen Hung-chang asked "does Soong still have as much political power [as he did three years ago]?"

PFP Legislator Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) restated the need for both parties to cooperate in the 2004 presidential election.

"If the KMT and the PFP split, defeat is guaranteed [in the 2004 presidential election,]" Chin said.

"It is just a political reality that we have to avoid a repeat of the 2000 defeat, the KMT and PFP must cooperate," she said. "Chen Shui-bian's win in the 1994 Taipei mayoral election and the 2000 presidential election were partly a result of a split in the opposition vote."

Chin added that with the PFP, it is quite obvious that the party would field Soong, its chairman, as the candidate for a joint ticket.