Sat, Dec 16, 2006 page8

• Johnny Neihu's NewsWatch: You love farce? Send in the clowns

  Johnny wraps the Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral and council elections, with all the tears, buffoonery and mental meltdowns you've come to love. And it just goes to show: a pretty face, Ma Ying-jeou's care and concern and a well-placed fist can do wonders for your electoral prospects. Oh, and that rascal Emile Sheng claims another victim: International Herald Tribune, come on down!

  • By Johnny Neihu 強尼內湖
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  After last weekend's elections, there were the winners. There was the "refuse to lose" crowd. And then there were the just plain confused.

  By the last, I'm referring to the clown car of also rans that livened up what otherwise would have been the dullest election since US president Jimmy Carter left politics. Call them the MADD (Media Attention Deficit Disorder) gang: a motley crew that included independent Taipei mayoral candidates Li Ao (李敖), Ko Szu-hai (柯賜海) and Clara Chou (周玉蔻), the guy who nobody cares about who ran in Kaohsiung on the platform that Taiwan is US territory, and toy-boy toter/self-styled blue-blood Hsu Chun-mei (許純美).

  Li touted himself as "anti-LP government," employing colorful Hoklo-English fusion slang for male genitals. He advised voters to "go shoot others with guns" because Taiwan was "finished" (optimism was never his forte).

  Ko ran for the same position in order to get back his cow, which was seized two years ago by the Taipei City Government. Interviewed by TTV after the election, he seemed shocked that he lost, despite a raft of polls consistently showing him pulling less than 2 percent of the vote. Staring into the middle distance while clutching his trademark pole weapon, he vowed to run again from Hualien in next year's legislative elections and blamed Taipei City residents for being "too proud." Meanwhile, his heifer will continue to languish somewhere in Pingtung County.

  Clara Chou transformed the "psycho xiaojie" stereotype so beloved of my foreign friends into an electoral strategy, turning up every morning like a jilted lover outside Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) office, where she had a daily meltdown delivered in a screeching voice through a bullhorn. Who said Taiwanese care about "face"?

  And Hsu entered the city council race to great fanfare before abruptly dropping out of view. The rabid publicity hound and variety show mainstay, who claims to be a tutor in the ways of "high society," surfaced after the vote to complain about how tired she was, how much money she'd spent and how politics just took too much hard work, darnit.

  She was right. Never has so much energy been expended on so many doomed campaigns.

  And what of the other Taipei City Council candidates that I previewed a few weeks ago?

  The People First Party's (PFP) Mike Wang (王育誠) got his ass booted off the council courtesy of a miserable 3.02 percent of the vote. I have new respect for the people of Shilin and Beitou districts for ejecting this consummate media shyster, though scandal-mongering independent candidate Lin Ruey-tu (林瑞圖) got up, ranked 9 out of 10 successful candidates.

  Shilin and Beitou also gave the DPP's Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) a seat with a steady 6.54 percent of the vote, which just goes to show that a campaign ditty that could have been written by a serial killer can get you into council. Oh, and wearing the odd black leotard. Fellow Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) protege Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) polled first in Songshan/Xinyi, so it seems that the Hsiao Army is marching on the Presidential Office. Expect a "Bi-khim for president" campaign by 2020 if we're not all Chicoms by then.

  The sheen of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) may not have rubbed off on his party's mayoral candidate (more on that in a moment), but goodness gracious it certainly did on Chueh "The Sensual Veterinarian" Mei-sha (闕枚莎), who scored a resounding 18.75 percent of the vote in Nangang/Neihu, the second-highest percentage of any candidate in the six main electorates. Was it Ma's last-minute switch to black-colored ads with the words "I am very concerned that Chueh Mei-sha will not be elected again" and a grim mayoral visage that did the trick? Or did Chueh's firm fist appeal to more than just the owners of suffering bovines?

  The PFP's jolly "Dr Husky" Hung Shih-chi (洪士奇) will have to return to duty at the Chung-Hsiao Municipal Hospital's emergency ward, I'm afraid. He missed the cut by 3,165 votes. Maybe he should buck the trend and give red envelopes to his patients. That would be a first for the hospital system.

  And lastly, what became of the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) team of CSI: TPE fame? Key member Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) collared the biggest vote in Shilin/Beitou, which was a massive personal boost in what was otherwise a poor result for the party overall. The only other successful candidate was Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) in Datong and Zhongshan districts, who like Chen Chien-ming outpolled all the DPP hopefuls. Lurking in Taipei City is a small but hard core of Taiwanese independence supporters, it seems. God bless them -- if not the TSU.

  But what really worries me is this: Who's looking after all of these spurned candidates? Suddenly, without their media fix, this group of unstable would-be politicos is going cold turkey. And Ko Szu-hai, for one, is armed.

  We can only pray that in some dimly lit basement near the Legislative Yuan they're huddled together clutching Styrofoam cups filled with weak coffee.

  Finally, a quiet voice says: "Hello, my name is Clara Chou, and I'm a mediaholic" (murmurs of encouragement). "It's been six days, three hours and 27 minutes since I appeared on television."

  And the "refuse to lose" crowd? After his embarrassing showing -- 4 percent in the Taipei mayoral race -- James "Hungry Ghost" Soong (宋楚瑜) said he would leave the stage. Don't bet on it: He's more likely to linger like a malevolent spirit, making mafan for Ma Ying-jeou from beyond the political grave. Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英), the KMT's pale blue hope in Kaohsiung, is holding out for a recount, which is his right. But it must be said: This is what the party gets for running a guy so bland that he makes KMT honorary something-or-other Lien Chan (連戰) look like Mr. Charisma.

  Not that the winners are much better. The KMT's Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) slunk into office in Taipei by becoming Ma Ying-jeou's Mini-Me. Indeed, the defining image of his campaign may have been a media scrum just before the election, in which only Hau's nervously darting eyes were visible above a gaggle of outstretched microphones -- all pointed at Ma Ying-jeou, standing beside him a head taller. Someone on Hau's staff clearly slept through Campaigning 101: How Not to Belittle Your Own Candidate.

  Meanwhile, Chen Chu's (陳菊) narrow victory in Kaohsiung may have briefly united the DPP in celebration. But even if the sputtering green machine managed not to careen into a ditch as many expected, there's already bickering from the back seat. Expect the knives to come out soon, as the "factions" that supposedly no longer exist duke it out over who will represent the party in 2008.

  Scandal Magnet-in-Chief Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has sent one of the preferred candidates -- Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) -- into the Heart of Darkness for the inauguration of someone only experts on postcolonial Africa have ever heard of. Su could end up muttering "the horror, the horror" in his mudbath in the Gambia when he finds out what his factional rivals have been up to while he's gone. And some in Hsieh, Yu Shyi-kun or Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) camp may be secretly hoping he comes down with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which the CIA (which is never wrong) says is a big problem over there.

  But the biggest losers in last week's elections were the wildly inaccurate opinion polls, and media outlets that peddled them. Two days before the election, most polls favored Huang over Chen Chu in Kaohsiung -- by 39 percent to 27 percent (United Daily News), 43 percent to 29 percent (China Times) or 51 percent to 31 percent (TVBS). Think an esteemed international polling group like Gallup could do better? Think again. They had Huang leading Chu 51 percent to 28 percent, albeit in late November.

  The explanation from those in the know: Some polls are deeply biased to begin with, but even the well-designed and conducted ones will fail to capture a large number of "hidden voters," who will not tell a stranger their preferred candidate -- but who are more likely to vote green.

  With candidates like Ko Szu-hai prowling the streets, it's no wonder some voters are hiding.

  Endnote: Two weeks ago I lamented the fact that even a top newspaper like the New York Times and its formidable, prize-winning staff can be bamboozled by local English-speaking interviewees who prefer not to tell the whole story or declare their interests. Then I discover that Patrick L. Smith, writing in the International Herald Tribune one week later, does exactly the same thing ("For many in Taiwan, status quo with China sounds fine," Dec. 11). In a piece worthy of KMT propagandist Su Chi (蘇起), Smith interviewed Soochow University political science professor Emile Sheng (盛治仁) for his sagely, professorial opinion -- but without informing unwitting readers of Sheng's public agenda to "depose" the president.

  What gives, Patrick? Don't you know what Emile's been up to?

  Smith endorsed Sheng's views on the KMT's rapprochement with China by painting the narrow DPP win in Kaohsiung as a "shift in public sentiment" toward "accommodation with Beijing," among other things. Good grief. And I thought all politics was local.

  With all these upmarket papers and freelancers doing this kind of thing, it makes you wonder how much of this is inherent to the craft, and to what extent journalists -- and editors, who should intervene if necessary -- are able to tell you what you are entitled to know, and what is being left out.

  For the moment, this dreadful virus of quoting Emile Sheng as a credible source is spreading much faster than I feared possible.

  What say I give World Health Organization director-general-elect Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) a call and tell her that the exceptionally virulent H5NSheng strain is infecting the world's journalists? No doubt she would insist that China has it under control -- before realizing the call was from Taiwan and hanging up.

  Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
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