Premier Su Tseng-chang finally declared candidacy for president next year, when he visited Fort Santo Domingo at Tamsui with his mother and wife yesterday.He is the latest addition to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s hopefuls to succeed President Chen Shui-bian after he steps down on May 20, 2008.Two have already announced their intention to seek the nation’s highest electoral office. They are Frank Hsieh, a former premier, and Yu Shyi-kung, chairman of the ruling party.
One more is likely to join in the fray shortly.She is none other than Vice President Annette Lu.She may have to, because the chances are almost nil that Chen will quit, as he has promised, if the Taipei district court convicts his wife of corruption in connection with borrowing receipts and bills from friends and relatives to claim a NT$14.8 million reimbursement from a public fund under his control for the conduct of “affairs pf state.”Should the conviction come before the ruling party’s primaries, Lu would be an accidental president, who would overshadow any of the three contenders.
President Chen knows this full well.That’s probably why he has told Stephen Young, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, he would have trouble deciding whom to anoint.The president knows Annette Lu won’t win.He does not like Frank Hsieh.Nor does he favor the premier.If more popular, Yu would be picked by the lame duck president outright.So, Chen quipped to Young that he would have to ask for an oracle, if he could not work out a compromise candidate of the ruling party for the 2008 election.
The type of oracle President Chen wants is revealed when a supplicant throws a pair of tiny red-painted kidney-shaped wood blocks on the floor before an altar of a deity.Both pieces of wood have flat bottoms and convex upper sides.The deity gives a yes oracle if one piece stays on its bottom and the other shows its convex surface.
A man who believes in the rule of magic, President Chen may just do that.We remember he declared, while campaigning for the legislative elections of 2004, that his amulet saved him from an “assassin’s” bullet three quarters of a year before, renewed its potency over a Taipei temple tripod where joss sticks were held, and distributed its replicas to supporters, claiming each one of them, who never parted with it, would live longer, more beautiful or handsome, pass any examination and be just as lucky as he was to survive any hazard or crisis.
（本文刊載於96.02.26 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
