Newspapers polls over the last few days have shown Lien and Soong ahead of Chen by 17 to 25 percentage points.
China's concealment for months of the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), has hurt Beijing's image here, however, and the DPP is starting to exploit that.
"It has made many Taiwanese people think twice about doing business with an authoritarian government," said DPP Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), the director of the party's international affairs section.
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) issued a statement on Monday evening offering to let Chen choose a different running mate for his re-election campaign.
Her outspoken criticisms of China, sometimes going beyond those of Chen, had won her the admiration of many within her party but made her controversial with the broader public.
In an interview on Monday, Soong said he still believed that he had a chance at winning the presidency on his own.
He said that he chose an alliance with Lien instead because he thought the country needed a president who could win more than 50 percent of the vote.
The selection of Lien, 66, and Soong, 61, underlines the continued dominance of older politicians over the conservative wing of national politics, despite the ties that these two men bring to the country's authoritarian past.
The most popular politician by far in the country today, polls show, is Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
But while Ma, at 52, is seven months older than Chen, he is still viewed within the KMT as too young for national leadership.
The KMT has a strong Confucian history of respect for elders, said Shaw Yu-ming (
"Ma will have his day by behaving mildly, politely," Shaw said.
Soong said that he and Lien both had more experience than Ma and could rely on the wide networks of skilled aides that each had gathered over the years.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
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