How Han Kuo-yu Breaks Through the Curse of Political Stars

 How Han Kuo-yu Breaks Through the Curse of Political Stars

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 18, 2018

Translation of an Excerpt

Since Taiwan walked out from the authoritarian system and completed democratization, many political stars have arisen with a trend; they have seized the changes in the ambiance, both internal and external, and the trends of the vox populi, caught the train of elections, fired up people’s passion and expectations, thus they have quickly climbed up. However, like the curse on democracy, they have fallen into the temporal world, burdened with the people's despair and accusations. In the cycle for the last 20 years, from Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou to Tsai Ing-wen and Ko Wen-je, there is no exception.

Viewed from the past instances, these once glorious political stars, having been bestowed with power, have not been loyal in responding to what the people want; whether for private gains and corruption, for fulfilling the party's will in wantonly expanding the party's power, or staying on cloud nine and feeling good about themselves, these once-idols of the masses have all, during the last mile of their political life, been jettisoned by the people, walking down from the Pantheon in disgrace.

As Tsai Ing-wen quickly wanes and Ko Wen-je’s myth having been debunked, it gave an opportunity to an atypical political figure, who came from a political party, but has not been hijacked by the old image of the political parties, who doesn’t talk about ideologies, connects with the grassroots and cares about bread and butter issues. It allowed Han Kuo-yu, a nobody just a year ago, to quickly churn up the "Han Kuo-yu vogue" in an extremely short period of time, bringing opportunities for the KMT and bringing hope to Kaohsiung, where Green has always been stronger than Blue, but where people want change. More importantly, Han has the opportunity to shoulder the heavy responsibility of guiding Taiwan in a right direction, substituting Tsai and Ko. 

This electoral battle of Han Kuo-yu has been super, because he has seized the trends of the people and found the correct breakthrough point; in the end, whether he successfully wins the race or losses it with a slim margin, he has accumulated the political capacity to blaze the trail to change Taiwan in 2020.

Attachment : none