Now Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
Getting re-elected was the easy part, as Ma's amazingly laid-back campaign tacitly acknowledged. But the scale of his victory -- 64 percent of the vote -- and the fact that he did this with little help from his party leadership, thereby establishing him as an almost autonomous political force, brings its own difficulties.
Ma has insisted he has no intention of running for the presidency in 2004. Of course he was also insistent about not wanting to run in the Taipei mayoral election in 1998, so we know the value of Ma's resolve. Eventually his determination to quit politics for academia was broken down, he said, by pleas from thousands of KMT supporters begging him to run.
But there are a lot of problems with a "brought to you by popular demand" Ma bid in 2004, not the least of them being KMT Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) own presidential ambitions. That Lien still has such ambitions says more about the bubble in which the KMT chairman moves than any reasonable estimation of his chances. Lien only got 24 percent of the vote in 2000 and his performance in a similar three-cornered rematch would almost certainly be worse. Ma could probably win an election while his boss almost certainly cannot. It would be a little embarrassing for Ma to bail on the citizens of Taipei to try for the top job after completing only one year of a second term, but "mature reflection on the needs of the nation" and similar bunkum will justify it. This would, however, presuppose either that Lien was willing to step aside, or that Ma was ready to lead a coup within his party.
Neither of these possibilities seems likely. Rational appraisal of his miserable chances is not something Lien has ever shown himself capable of in the past, but nor has Ma shown himself to be a party intriguer. KMT stalwarts more interested in the party's electoral success than pandering to its chairman's vanity might suggest that the choice of a candidate by polling -- the party experimented with this in Kaohsiung -- would be an intelligent move. Two problems here would be getting Lien's agreement in the first place and then making sure the poll was not rigged -- remember the so-called democratic election of Lien as chairman, somewhat spoilt by his being the only candidate for the post.
But assuming that Lien insists on running, Ma is left with the unpalatable job of resisting pressure to stab his boss in the back, while at the same time watching attempts at unifying the blue camp which may result in James Soong's (
But even if Lien stood aside, the choices for Ma aren't really much better. Soong's seniority would make him the obvious presidential candidate. Would Ma be willing to run in the vice president slot? A lot of frost would have to melt in their relationship for this to happen. The KMT would have a huge problem accepting the renegade Soong as its standard bearer. And would the blue camp dare to flout conventional wisdom to the extent of fielding a ticket with two mainlanders on it? And yet if the KMT doesn't broker a deal with Soong the blue camp's presidential vote will be split disastrously. The journalistic cliche of the moment, following the election, is to say that mayor Ma is on a roll. But given the complexities of blue camp politics we have to ask: On a roll to where?
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