To Run for President, Ko Wen-je Can't Just Play the Role of a Criticizer

 To Run for President, Ko Wen-je Can't Just Play the Role of a Criticizer

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

July 22, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

President Tsai Ing-wen and Kaohsiung City Mayor Han Kuo-yu have one after the other taken their battle stations for the 2020 presidential race; Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je has increased his activities, attacking the two parties with high decibels. Tsai Ing-wen is deliberately operating the electoral campaign towards a Blue-Green duel, attempting to use the ideology card to cover up her feeble governance, with the strategy seemingly working. However, the ensuing effect could possibly be diminishing, especially by over-playing the anti-China card, the strength of the reaction could lead to the sliding of her support ratings in the polls. Han Kuo-yu is being mired by the DPP with its wave upon wave of attacks on his capability of governance and character. All these are opportunities for the third way of Ko Wen-je.

Since the beginning of this year, Ko Wen-je has begun deploying for his presidential bid. In March, he went to the United States for an "interview". In May, he visited Japan for "a study tour during Reiwa in the first year". In June, he visited 7 cities and counties on a tight schedule, and attending the Twin City Forum in Shanghai in July, followed by a tour of Tainan, Taichung, and Changhua, and at the same time, actively unveiling preferential policies, including releasing 50,000 part-time job opportunities at City Hall by using retired civil servants and public school teachers on a priority basis, followed by lowering housing taxes, studying a cut in land tax, easing subsidies for preschool child care, and relaxing penalties on violators in housing payments, legalizing them on the spot, etc. The pro-Ko City Council members exposed that Ko Wen-je would announce his intentions to run in August. When Ko Wen-je said that "the presidential race should not be a choice between a veggie bun and a country bumpkin," he seemed to have made a choice in the question of running or not running.

Since Tsai Ing-wen emerged as the winner in the DDP primary, the DPP has begun to actively integrate. The pro-Tsai Ying-wen faction estimates the strength of Ko fans at between 20% and 25%, with its political tectonic plate tilting toward the Green, and once Ko decides not to run, they will turn to support Tsai Ing-wen. Thus, the DPP turned their firepower toward Ko Wen-je, forcibly attempting to poach "Ko fans." Subsequently, the DPP invited Lin Fei-fan, a key figure in the New Power Party (NPP), to serve as DPP deputy secretary-general, apparently wanting to poach the youth vote of Ko Wen-je, and prompting the NPP to cut its ties with Ko; the Green Camp 1450 Net Army has also turned its gunfire on Ko Wen-je, thus, Ko Wen-je could no longer suppress his fury, criticizing successively with vulgar language both Tsai Ing-wen and Su Tseng-chang.

Ko Wen-je even directly lambasted the DPP’s presidential primary as neither democratic nor progressive. With respect to the "Green and White cooperation", Ko said that only after foolishly being the butt of attacks for over a year, has he found that the machinery of the state has been systematically clobbering him. The Ko City Hall has listed "five big scandals" headed by the Taipei Big Dome case; however, under the DPP City Council's boycott, the Taipei Big Dome has become a rotten egg that cannot be hatched nor be dismantled. The Twin Towers development case has also been rejected by the Foreign Investment Review Committee under the Economics Ministry on the grounds of "national security misgivings."

Nevertheless, the Taipei Big Dome has turned into a big rotten egg and Taipei City doesn’t have any important development projects; these are facts, while Tsai Ing-wen is not necessarily a "veggie bun", and Han Kuo-yu is no "country bumpkin," either. Ko Wen-je cannot run for president for the sake of running for president; moreover, he should not use as the only grounds for running that both the "Blue and Green are rotten." He must speak clear-cutly his own pledge for Taiwan and for the people.

Attachment : none