Mayor of Taipei Ma Ying-jeou won a landslide in the election yesterday. He won a second four-year term despite the scathing assault by President Chen Shui-bian on his non-Taiwanese descent. Former President Lee Teng-hui, who helped him defeat Chen four years ago, switched sides in the run-up to the election. Lee joined Chen in questioning the loyalty of the incumbent mayor, who is a mainlander born in Hong Kong.

President Chen proclaimed his doctrine of “one country on each side” of the Taiwan Strait on August 3. The Chen doctrine was intended to consolidate the support of pro-independence voters for Lee Ying-yuan, the Democratic Progressive candidate who ran against Ma. Lee is a Hakka-born islander.

Aware that Lee stood no chance to beat the popular incumbent, President Chen, who lost his 1998 bid for reelection as Taipei mayor, decided to make provincialism an issue in the mayoralty race, in which his candidate was more than soundly defeated. Lee’s defeat is proof that the Chen doctrine did not work wonders. Provincialism is the backbone of the Chen doctrine.

Provincialism was not an issue in the mayoral election in Kaohsiung. Both candidates are native-born islanders. Mayor Frank Hsieh, a Taipei-born former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party, narrowly defeated his Kuomintang challenger Huang Jun-ying.

One remarkable fact of the Kaohsiung election was that Huang started his campaign as the underdog trailing far behind Hsieh but came close to scare President Chen out of his wits. As a matter of fact, Chen was compelled to go to the south Taiwan port city many a time to stump for Hsieh, after James Soong, chairman of the People First Party, had thrown his support behind Huang. Soong is a Hunanese-born mainlander, who was beaten by Chen in the neck-to-neck presidential election in 2000. Soong’s support was like a shot in the arm, adding momentum to Huang’s campaign.

That means that the Chen doctrine is unworkable in Kaohsiung.

The Kaohsiung race was widely perceived as a prelude to the next presidential election. President Chen, who is all set to seek reelection, may face Soong, Ma or Lien Chan, the Kuomintang chairman. Should the two opposition parties work together a year and a quarter from now just as they did in the Kaohsiung election, Chen would have a steeply uphill struggle to remain in office. Chen has gone on the record that the issue in the next presidential race is the status of Taiwan, a code name for Taiwan independence. He will try to make the Chen doctrine a dominant opinion of the people of Taiwan on its relations with China so as to minimize the appeal for unification to the electorate from his rivals in 2004.

It will be a wrong issue. The Chen doctrine will not work wonders for the president.（本評論代表個人意見，原文刊載於聯合報，91.12.08，卅九版）