Terry Gou’s Saber Has Been Drawn, While Tsai Ing-wen’s Sword Is Already Broken

   Terry Gou’s Saber Has Been Drawn, While Tsai Ing-wen’s Sword Is Already Broken

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)

May 15, 2017

 Translation of an Except

Prodding Terry Gou to run in the presidential election of 2020 has, surprisingly, become the main campaign plank of the candidates in the chairmanship election of the Kuomingtang, and it has stirred up intense attention and discussion in society. Furthermore, a number of public opinion organizations conducted surveys, discovering that if Terry Gou and Tsai Ying-wen were pitted to run in 2020, Terry Gou would win hands down. Facing the issue of the "2020 Tsai-Gou duel," the Presidential Office and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party headquarters look awkward, only using remarks such as "hypothetical question with no meaning" and "non-issue" to muddle through and evade the embarrassment.

Of course, at present, Terry Gou’s 2020 run is indeed a "hypothetical" question, not to mention that Terry Gou himself has not admitted it frontally. In fact, if Terry Gou seriously wants to run, he must first cross two very high hurdles. The first hurdle is his personal willingness. If Terry Gou wants to run for president, he must be psychologically prepared to morph from an industry tycoon into a public servant. The second high hurdle is that viewed from the current situation, Terry Gou has to, before 2020, cultivate in the Hon Hai Group a successor to replace himself as chairman, which is extremely difficult.

As long as Terry Gou had the determination and sense of mission, the two high hurdles could be crossed in an instant. If Terry Gou decided to run for president, Tsai Ing-wen's road for re-election in 2020 would be extremely rocky, because Terry Gou has the advantages of both "momentum" and "men"; it would be a scenario hard to rival for Tsai Ing-wen, who has been languishing in the intensive care unit in the polls.

If Terry Gou, armed with the advantages of both "momentum" and "men," and emulating the approach of Emmanuel Macron, set up a new political party one year before the election, jettisoning the rotten baggage of traditional politics of both the Kuomintang and the DPP, shouting a rallying cry on the high ground, he would not only have the opportunity to win the presidential election in one fell swoop, he could even, like pushing down an already shaky structure, break the political shackles of Blue-Green confrontation that have hijacked Taiwan for 20 years.

Lin Cho-shui said: "The fact that Terry Gou, never heard of and never seen before, a political outsider, could best an incumbent president in an opinion poll indicates that the public mood strongly want change, a tendency that could not be taken lightly." Popular dissatisfaction quickly climbs like an elevator; this is a veritable "true issue"!

More embarrassingly, the true issue is not only that Terry Gou is too strong, but rather that Tsai Ying-wen is too weak. What makes the 2020 presidential election advance its start is the lack of a report card-- Tsai Ying-wen’s loss of popular support, forfeiting her chance, giving all others an opportunity to enter the race. In such a situation, can Tsai Ying-wen and the DPP remain in slumber?

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