Since People magazine produced its list of "losers of the year" last week, we have been mulling what a Taiwanese version would look like. Doing the same thing in Taiwan, of course, provides one with an embarrassment of riches from which to choose; the problem is winnowing such a rich harvest.
First place, surely, must go to Sophie Wang (
Loser number two: Diane Lee (
Loser number three: Christine Tsung (宗才怡). Appointed minister of economic affairs on the strength of little more than her ability to raise funds for Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in the US, she lasted just 48 days in office. In a written statement, Tsung said she felt like a "rabbit that had mistakenly stumbled into the jungle without any knowledge of the political traps that lay all around."
Fourth place has to go to John Chang (章孝嚴), the man who spent most of December celebrating that he finally had Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) listed as his father on his ID card. Let's see; this is a man who wants to rebuild a political career as a mover and shaker in the KMT -- from where he fell from grace after, believe it or not, an affair with Sophie Wang. How to show commitment to democratic values: get officially recognized as the son of Taiwan's last dictator.
Fifth, perhaps President Chen Shui-bian. It is almost impossible to think of a single accomplishment of Chen's government in the past 12 months. All we have had are a series of wishy-washy economic plans, largely meaningless because the budget is lacking. It is, however, only too easy to think of a number of snafus, for example the bizarre about-face over direct links, and the entire treatment of the farmers' and fishermen's associations' bad-loan problem. What a shame, all that power and no idea how to use it.
Other losers this year include Chang Po-ya (
Last, but not least for our top 10, let's just throw in most of Kaohsiung's city councilors, many of whom are so forgetful they currently can't remember where the millions of dollars they found in their bank accounts last week came from. Not quite as good as last year's top loser, Chu Mei-feng (
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