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President can't mediate among hopefuls: official

"An empty hole invites the wind."

Annette Lu, vice president

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has no plan to mediate among the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential aspirants before the registration period for the party's primary ends, a senior official said yesterday.

Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said it was impossible for Chen to do anything before that date, because there was no way to know who would be vying for the party's nomination until then.

The official said recent newspaper reports that Chen had been trying to dissuade certain hopefuls from joining the race were based merely on speculation.

Cho was referring to a report in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday which claimed that Chen had tried to dissuade Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun from running for the presidency in 2008 in an effort to "simplify" the presidential competition within the party.

Lu, Yu, former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) are regarded as "the four DPP heavyweights" who are likely to compete to represent the party in the next presidential election, but none of them has so far announced their decision to join the race.

As the DPP Central Standing Committee has moved the registration deadline for presidential candidates forward to next month, Cho said that the negotiation process would not begin until the candidates make their intention known.

The committee ruled that the party's presidential hopefuls would have to register between March 5 and March 9. Party members will vote on presidential candidates on May 6, after which public polls will be held. The party will name its presidential candidate on May 30.

Lu dismissed the report by saying: "An empty hole invites the wind."

She said that she had not yet made up her mind whether to enter the race.

"How can President Chen convince me to drop out of the race if I have not yet told him that I will run?" she asked.

Su said that "the DPP's mechanism to screen the perfect candidate for the presidential election began very recently."

"It is quite impossible for the president to talk down any specific DPP member at this moment," Su said.

DPP Legislator Yu Jan-daw (余政道) said he agreed that Lu should be dissuaded from running for president.

"If we need a female candidate, [former acting Kaohsiung City mayor] Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) would be more suitable than Lu to compete for the presidency," the lawmaker said.

"Yeh has sufficient capacity to be the nation's leader in terms of her integrity and administrative competence," Yu Jan-daw said.

Additional reporting by Jimmy Chuang, Shih Hsiu-chuan and CNA
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