Chen should avoid making trouble before he goes

Blessed with good weekend weather, Ma Ying-jeou, the nominee of the opposition Kuomintang, and Frank Hsieh, the nominee of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, both stepped up their schedules to take advantage of the last weekend before election day comes.

For his part, Ma spent much of the weekend trying to make up for public disapproval over the melee started at Hsieh’s campaign headquarters by four KMT lawmakers.

Hsieh has tried to squeeze all of the political value he possibly can from the incident while continuing to assail Ma with accusations of disloyalty, such as claiming he still has permanent resident status in the United States and running advertisements claiming Ma would open the floodgates to let mainland Chinese products and workers into Taiwan.

We are happy to see our vibrant democracy flourishing in the lead-up to what will ultimately be another history-making presidential election.

However, we are surprised at the way that outgoing President Chen Shui-bian is trying to help his party’s candidate Frank Hsieh.

Over the past several days, President Chen has made public remarks that were either indirectly critical of Hsieh or at least not helpful to Hsieh’s attempts to close the gap between himself and the KMT’s Ma. During an interview with the TVBS cable TV network, Chen responded to a complaint made by Hsieh, in which the presidential candidate said he was only able to serve as Cabinet premier for nine months, which was not long enough.

President Chen said Hsieh’s short term in the office was part of his overall plan to let DPP elites take turns gaining administrative experience in his government, and declared to the TVBS anchorwoman Georgina Fang that he wished he knew how long of a term would be sufficient.

At another event in Kaohsiung, President Chen announced that the KMT’s Ma would get elected easily as long as Ma was able to offer up proof that he no longer possessed a “green card” granting him permanent residency rights in the United States. Sometimes we wonder if President Chen, who has a long rivalry with Frank Hsieh dating back to when the two men vied with each other for the DPP’s nomination to run for Taipei mayor in 1994, might be deliberately trying to dampen Hsieh’s chances of succeeding him in office.

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