TAIPEI - If there were an award to honor a
Taiwanese politician's stunning ability to
recapture the spotlight, it would certainly go to
Frank Hsieh, who on May 6 surprisingly won the
ruling Democratic Progressive Party's 2008
presidential primary.
Hsieh, 61, along
with incumbent President Chen Shui-bian and
premier Su Tseng-chang, who incidentally just
tendered his resignation, which was accepted by
Chen, were the three main
lawyers for political
dissidents in 1980s. After decades in politics,
Hsieh certainly has a knack for running political
campaigns and managing crises.
However,
Hsieh is still considered the riskiest choice for
the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) because of
an ongoing investigation of corruption charges
against him in a case dating back to his tenure as
mayor of the island's second-largest city,
Kaohsiung, from 1998-2005. But then his likely
opponent also faces allegations.
Ma
Ying-jeou, former Taipei mayor and chairman of the
major opposition Kuomintang (KMT), has been
nominated by the party central committee as the
its candidate for the presidency next year. The
nomination is expected to be rubber-stamped by the
KMT's party congress next month.
Therefore, the 2008 presidential election
is likely to be a duel between Hsieh and Ma. Some
political analysts have joked that Taiwanese
people will have to choose their leader from two
"corruption suspects": Ma is currently on trial
for allegedly embezzling a mayoral special
allowance.
Described as a pragmatic
activist, Hsieh immediately visited his rivals in
the primary, including outgoing prime minister Su,
incumbent DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun, and Vice
President Annette Lu, hours after the outcome was
released. He furthermore kicked off a trip to
visit local commissioners and mayors who didn't
endorse him in the primary. Likewise, he initiated
a media campaign promoting "more music and sports
in Taiwan", a message sure to be appreciated by
the majority of voters who are sick of hearing too
much about politics.
Hsieh was born in
1946 in Taipei to the family of a Chinese-medicine
doctor, who left a heavy debt to the family. Along
with his four brothers and sisters, Hsieh had to
work as a food vendor and making lanterns in his
childhood.
Hsieh officially entered
politics as a Taipei city councilor in 1981,
shortly after he completed his study in Japan in
1975. In the same local election, Chen Shui-bian
received the most votes, and a decade-long
competition between the two ensued. Hsieh's
assistants implied that the competition was over
by the time Chen was elected president in 2000,
but it never really ended.
In 1994, Hsieh
and Chen were both interested in running for mayor
of Taipei, but Hsieh immediately endorsed Chen
after he lost the party's primary. After failing
to win the DPP's primary for the mayoral election,
the then-legislator accepted an invitation to run
on a joint ticket with Peng Ming-min in Taiwan's
first presidential election in 1996. The bid
failed after it received only 21% of the votes.
Disagreements between Chen and Hsieh have
always existed. Hsieh, believing in opening up
toward mainland China, tried to visit Xiamen when
he was Kaohsiung's mayor in 2000 but had to cancel
the trip because Chen and the Mainland Affairs
Council disapproved.
In 2005, as premier,
Hsieh reached an agreement with independent
legislators for the passage of the government's
annual budget and the military budget, but Chen
expressed his reluctance to endorse Hsieh's
proposal and reportedly asked him to resign, 10
months after his official appointment.
The
following year, Hsieh turned down Chen's offer to
become the Presidential Office's secretary
general. Lately, Hsieh has expressed his wish to
form a coalition government should he be elected
with an opposition majority in the legislature,
but once again Chen expressed his disagreement by
criticizing his approach as unfeasible.
Hsieh having won the primary, he and Chen
are now again at odds over who should be the
vice-presidential candidate. Hsieh is believed to
prefer former vice prime minister Yeh Chu-lan,
while Chen purportedly prefers Su Tseng-chang. The
outcome will be
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