The breakout of the Rebar financial crisis has unexpectedly brought an early arrival of Taiwan's political high season as politicians of the ruling DPP began to gear up for the 2007 legislative and 2008 presidential elections over the weekend.
Confrontations between the DPP's "four superstars," the presidential hopefuls and factional leaders, were supposed to start in March when party nominations of legislative and presidential candidates will be made. But skirmishes between them took place Saturday when President Chen Shui-bian chided Premier Su Cheng-chang over his "mishandling" of the Rebar incident, prompting the premier to publicly defend himself and rebuke "on-looking" comrades without naming names.
Strictly speaking, the DPP has only two credible presidential candidates: Premier Su, who has been dubbed the "electric fireball" for his aggressive, energetic style; and Frank Hsieh, former premier and the party's losing candidate in December's Taipei mayoral election. Both are viewed as moderates on cross-strait relations, while the two dimmer "stars," DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun and Vice President Annette Lu, follow President Chen's harder pro-independence line.
Cross-strait issues and Taiwan's status quo are expected to remain high on the agenda during 2007-8, threatening to further deepen the island's already highly polarized political divide.
The broad goals of Su and Hsieh on cross-strait relations aren't much different from that of the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou: all three back the political status quo (at least in the near term) and favor closer economic relations. Ma subscribes to the "92 consensus" on respective interpretations of "one China," Hsieh is for "constitutional one-China"; Su has maintained vagueness on this issue so far.
Any of the three will be better than Chen.
（本文刊載於96.01.22 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
