Let's face it: everybody screws up. There's not one of us who hasn't. The difference for politicians is that their screw-ups wind up on the front pages of the newspapers. So politicians -- good ones at least -- develop an ability to recover from foul-ups. But sometimes even a smart politician fails to recover when he has really screwed up.
Since next year's presidential election will be almost an exact replay of the 2000 contest between President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen's poor performance over the past three years has demonstrated the DPP's lack of experience in government. How to convince the public that life is better than it was four years ago will be the current administration's greatest challenge.
With the economy still struggling and the unemployment rate surging, Chen has been having a hard time finding a way out. He will not have a chance if he seeks to blame the opposition for holding him back in almost every matter.
Some progress has been made in terms of reforms on vote buying and the crackdown on so-called black-gold politics, but Chen needs a more impressive track record than that to improve his approval ratings.
He should focus on specific issues such as school discipline, women's rights, social welfare, and health care. At the same time, he should act to reform the education system, cut the growth of crime, restore discipline to the schools, protect the environment, improve health care, and provide good housing. Voters are in desperate need in these areas and if Chen and the DPP lead with these issues, they will expand their support base and create a favorable environment for Chen's re-election.
But the mere fact that Chen faces tremendous difficulties does not mean that the Lien-Soong ticket is a certain winner.
Long perceived as a stiff and moderate politician, Lien desperately needs to rebuild his personal image. Lien's biggest problem comes with the joint ticket itself, namely, "the Soong effect." The intensity of their past rivalry highlights the inherent instability of the KMT-PFP alliance. Is Soong really willing to be Lien's subordinate next year? Will his supporters accept Soong's position as the No. 2 of the pan-blue camp? And the KMT and the PFP have raised each other's suspicions about corrupt pasts.
During the 2000 presidential election campaign, the KMT filed a lawsuit against Soong, accusing him of embezzling large sums from party coffers during his tenure as the party's secretary-general.
The move hit the Soong camp so hard that it was considered a major factor in his defeat. The main reason for that defeat lay in Soong's failure to provide voters with a timely and clear refutation. In other words, in an extremely competitive campaign, any mishandling of negative accusations leads to disaster.
The same goes for the newly conjoined Lien-Soong ticket. One of its weaknesses will be the pair's need to distance themselves from their ugly past.
Both Lien and Soong should pledge to voters that their electoral collaboration amounts neither to a resurgence of black-gold politics, nor to a deal done in backroom horse-trading.
To prove that their joint ticket is not just a marriage of convenience or simply for the sake of defeating Chen, both must turn their weaknesses into strengths by convincing voters that they can do a better job than the DPP.
Liu Kuan-teh is a political commentator based in Taipei.
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