By Francis Markus in Taipei

The television current affairs producers at least on the particular channel I happened to be watching were serving up a stodgy diet over the Chinese New Year.

We'd just had the pie charts breaking down the support base of the opposition presidential candidate, Chen Shui-bian, into age groups, ethnic origins, gender, profession, educational level.

My friend and I were taking bets as to whether the next graphic coming up on our television screen would divide up the voters according to shoe size or sexual orientation.

Revelations

When suddenly and thankfully something interesting came on in the form of an interview with Mr Chen's wife, Wu Shu-jen.

Ms Wu, who's been confined to a wheelchair since being deliberately run over by a truck in a politically inspired attack in the 80s, proved full of revelations.

Frankly and with a charming smile she confided that her husband was wooden, totally unromantic, not interested in talking about anything but politics and law. He was, she said, totally useless at doing anything at home.

And once she'd described for the interviewer his private persona and his public one, she had very little hesitation in saying, when asked which of the two she preferred - the public one.

Not "on message"

But perhaps Chen Shui-bian can take some small comfort in the fact that the prospective first ladies of his rivals aren't necessarily always "on message" either.

On the same day the wife of the vice president Lien Chan, who was out garnering support for his campaign to become head of state, was addressing an audience of war veterans.

Repeating her husband's pledge to raise their pensions, she boldly and surely truthfully stated that only the governing KMT had the resources to do that.

All this while the party, which is believed to be the richest one in the world is battling to clean up its image and assure a sceptical public that it is committed to getting rid of money politics.

And there was an amazing prime time emotional outpouring the other day from the wife of the third main candidate James Soong, who's running as an independent after being booted out of the KMT for deciding to stand against Mr Lien, the party's official candidate.

Mr Soong's now been accused by the KMT of embezzling millions of dollars of party funds, while he was a senior party official in the early 90s - allegations which he's vehemently denied.

Financial scandal

His wife Chen Wan-shui broke into convulsive sobs as she faced the media to rebut the latest twist in the financial scandal enveloping the family since December.

Talking about the allegations surrounding five luxury apartments her son is said to own in San Francisco, she wailed that he'd been struggling to make it in life on his own.

If he made a success of things, everyone said it was because of his father. If he failed, then everyone scoffed at him as a nobody despite his high profile parentage.

The media's continuing attempts to link the San Francisco penthouses with cash allegedly siphoned by Mr Soong out of party coffers, are just one strand of the political drama featuring the three main protagonists - and of course their wives.

A rebel province

This poll, which is only the second direct presidential election to be held in Taiwan is also of course about how the island sees its destiny in relation to mainland China.

Beijing regards Taiwan as a rebel province and still maintains the threat of military force, should the island declare formal independence from China. To those who are just about to say: "Well isn't Taiwan already independent from China?" - actually the island has stopped - with a squealing of rhetorical brakes - just short of that kind of declaration.

But the man who Beijing fears could put his foot on the accelerator is the opposition presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian. His Democratic Progressive Party says it wants to do away once and for all with the commitment the KMT maintains, however vaguely, to eventual reunification with the mainland.

But Mr Chen has been calculating his campaign message to sound the most moderate note he possibly can towards Beijing. He's trying to persuade jittery voters that the KMT or the ex-KMT in the form of James Soong are not the only ones who can offer stability and reduce the chances of provoking an attack by Beijing.

Balloons from China

But although he's currently ahead in many of the opinion polls, his chances of success are still fragile. The television programme which aired his wife's devastatingly candid comments, also showed a graph of the fluctuations in his popularity over the past few weeks, which suggested that her frankness is not the only hazard he faces.

It indicated that Chen Shui-bian's approval rating dropped by several percentage points immediately after a recent incident in which the military reported that several objects believed to be balloons had sailed into Taiwan's airspace, allegedly coming from China.

Just before Taipei's last presidential elections in 1996 China launched missile tests close to the island to try to rein in potential pro-independence sentiment among the voters.

A friend of mine who's originally from the mainland caustically remarked that a repeat performance - or indeed Beijing's often spelt out threat of using military force against Taiwan - was quite unnecessary when such objects as balloons could prove so effective.