Taiwan vote pits a smoothy against your average guy

By Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan TV viewers watching a series of presidential debates have seen a polished, professorial type facing off against a sharp-tongued opponent who talks like your average guy.

In the glare of the cameras, the plain-spoken Frank Hsieh has portrayed himself as a son of the soil and tries to cast his rival, Ma Ying-jeou, as an outsider because of his mainland China heritage.

The sometimes sarcastic candidate of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has held the presidency for the past eight years, also likes to remind voters his rival was indicted last year for corruption. Ma has since been acquitted.

Hsieh is also fond of ridiculing Ma's plans for a Greater China common market styled after the European Union, delivering his attacks as easily in the self-ruled island's dialect as he does in Mandarin Chinese.

The Harvard-educated Ma, who opinion polls suggest will win the presidency for the Nationalist Party (KMT) on March 22, replies in a more polished -- some say stiff -- manner.

Hsieh is out of order for negative campaigning, he counters, and the DPP has overlooked the more serious issue of economic development.

"Ma is good-looking and speaks English. He was educated in the United States and has an academic degree. He's a gentleman, and people in Taiwan like that," said Chang Jui-chuan, a rapper known for his political lyrics.

"Hsieh doesn't want to be controlled. He says whatever he wants. Hsieh is closer to the common ordinary people who we all are."

WIDER DIFFERENCES

Poles apart in personal style, the two candidates are also divided by their political platforms and campaign strategies.

Ma, a 57-year-old ex-mayor of Taipei and former chairman of the KMT, which once controlled China until losing a civil war to the Communists, is campaigning on a list of specific pledges to revive an economy saddled with inflation and wage stagnation.

Some pledges involve more trade with China, which has claimed self-ruled Taiwan as its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and is determined to bring the island under its rule, by force if necessary.

Hsieh, 61, a former premier and one-time mayor of Taiwan's second-largest city, Kaohsiung, seeks a cautious opening of trade, tourism and investment ties with China, coupled with more domestic social welfare to help the island economy.

But the DPP nominee campaigns more emphatically on his Taiwan roots and belief in Taiwan's autonomy.

He has made much in recent weeks of the fact that Ma once carried a U.S. green card, insinuating a lack of loyalty to Taiwan.