Sun, Nov 03, 2002 page8

• Pan-blues bicker over Kaohsiung sacrifice

  • By Chin Heng-wei 金恆煒
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  The plan for cooperation between the KMT and the PFP in the Kaohsiung mayoral election as devised by the two party chairmen, Lien Chan (連戰) and James Soong (宋楚瑜), has already fallen apart. The pan-blue camp's strategy of backing a single candidate to oppose the DPP has completely collapsed. But that camp now wishes to play an even more complex game of "sacrificing some candidates in favor of others." That would involve voters sacrificing two pan-blue candidates for every one that they support.

  There was to have been an integration of the pan-blue ranks, carried out between the two parties. But in the end, the KMT's Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英) refused to back out of the race, and the PFP's Chang Po-ya (張博雅) has been even more determined to campaign to the end. PFP Chairman James Soong blamed the fiasco on the KMT's "promotion" of Huang Jun-ying. In other words, while the KMT made a point of "recommending" Huang, rather than "nominating" him, it would appear that the difference was merely one of form rather than substance.

  The problem is that nobody in the two parties is willing to play the game. So how can the entire electorate of Kaohsiung be expected to play it? Even if it is just a matter of calling upon the "anti-green" KMT and PFP supporters to sacrifice one candidate and support another, the difficulty of the plan is greater than mere "integration." It is not a matter that the two party chairmen can mend easily.

  There exists only one precedent for the pan-blue camp in this situation. That was in the 1998 election for the mayor of Taipei City. The New Party's Wang Chien-hsien (王建火宣) participated but didn't run, openly urging New Party supporters to give all their votes to his opponent, the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). As expected, he received only 2.97 percent of the vote. The play was effective, so effective that it drove support to the enemy. New Party supporters flocked to the PFP, and the New Party met its end.

  So will we see the the same thing happen in Kaohsiung? In other words, among the three pan-blue candidates, is there anyone willing to lay down their own candidacy to promote another? Chang Po-ya publicly resigned from her post as a national policy advisor to make clear her determination to campaign to the bitter end. Obviously, she won't be backing down. As for Huang Jun-ying, with the full weight of the KMT behind him, he has been rising in the polls. Not even KMT Chairman Lien Chan would dare to sacrifice him for the sake of "integration." The only one left is Shih Ming-teh (施明德), but even if he threw in his lot with the KMT and announced that "a vote for Huang is a vote for Shih," given his low ratings in the polls, it wouldn't make any difference.

  With no takers in sight, I fear that a sacrificial move is even more of a fairy tale than KMT-PFP integration.

  Chin Heng-wei is editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine.

  Translated by Ethan Harkness
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