The DPP’s real candidate
I may be either overly paranoid or slow on the uptake, depending on your political stance, but something just occurred to me last night, something that would explain a great many questions, politically speaking. Mainly, how did Frank Hsieh get the DPP presidential candidate nomination? Why doesn’t he seem to have a concrete platform? Why is Su so down on being his running mate, when it would clearly help the ticket’s chances?
Then it hit me: Maybe Hsieh isn’t the real DPP candidate. Su’s behavior recently mirrors that of Wang Jin-pyng, who seems to be waiting in the wings for the chance that Ma won’t be able to run in 2008. Why would Su do that? I wondered. But when I thought more about it, I realized that Su has more to wait for than Wang in this respect. The DPP never changed its charter to let an indicted candidate run for president, and with Chen and Yu in charge, it’s not likely to. Chen always preferred Su over his rival Hsieh, and the presidential office has been trying to get Yeh Chu-lan off her vp-oriented warpath, with dubious effect. Also, Hsieh’s involvement in a number of corruption scandals is still being investigated, whereas Su is relatively clean.
Right now, the KMT is gunning for Hsieh while paying little attention to Su, who still controls a lot of resources. In the case of an indictment of Hsieh close to election time, there won’t be enough time for the KMT to gather enough political momentum against Su to be effective in time for the election. Not only that, but the DPP can score big political capital points by trumpeting the fact that Hsieh will have bowed out of the election after being indicted, while Ma is still running.
It could also be that this is just a contingency plan for the DPP in the case of a Hsieh indictment, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense as a main strategy. We’ll see who thinks too much in a few months.
Ah… another tin-foil hat conspiracist. We’ll be having a meetup on the 3rd of Octember. You should come.
Comment by Mark — July 18, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
Sorry, Mark, your comment was marked as spam, so I just now found it.
Comment by Poagao — July 28, 2007 @ 8:37 am