But Will He Run The Country?

Ma

Ying-jeou likes to run. As mayor of Taipei for the past four years, he's become famous for a punishing 17-hour-a-day work schedule that includes a religiously observed half-hour jog. Over the weekend, he broke the tape on an utterly triumphant political race, winning a second four-year term in the mayor's office by a landslide. The question for Taiwan: will Ma complete his term—or will he choose to run for the island's presidency in 2004?

This has become a hot topic in Taiwan because Ma is one of the island's most popular politicians, thanks to his movie star looks and squeaky clean image. What's more, he's a member of the Kuomintang Party (KMT), which ruled Taiwan for 51 years before being voted out of power two years back. The current thinking is that Ma could present a strong challenge to President Chen Shui-bian, possibly heralding the return of the KMT. That would be an epochal event for the island's nascent, ever-evolving democracy, signaling either a revival of the cash-rich party's hegemony or, at the least, the start of a two-party system. The mainland would certainly be watching: the KMT was its enemy for decades, but Beijing is even more suspicious of Chen's Democratic Progressive Party, which started out as a pro-independence group.

Ma, a youthful 52, is coy about his plans, and he's got some limbering up to do within his party before he can think of a run. KMT Chair-man Lien Chan stood for election in 2000 and did badly, scoring 23% of the vote, but he might run again. KMT defector James Soong also has presidential ambitions, and he nearly beat Chen in 2000 as a third-party candidate. If Soong runs, Ma's support would be split. "If there are two sets of can-didates," Ma tells TIME, "we will only repeat the defeat of two years ago." Is that the sound of the 2004 starting gun?