Next year’s presidential election is approaching. According to recently conducted public opinion polls, the support rate of former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has steadily risen to second place, after Vice President William Lai (賴清德), while surpassing New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜).
What happened in Hsinchu City in the local elections last year is likely to happen again. Among the three mayoral candidates, Lin Keng-jen (林耕仁) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), Kao was the most incompetent and controversial.
However, she exploited voters’ dislike for the blue and green camps and won the election. This is what I call the “Lin Keng-jen phenomenon.”
Today, Ko can come second because of this mindset: dislike for a certain candidate leading to a liking for their ardent critic. Many voters have become Ko’s supporters, because he criticizes what they disapprove of. Recently, witnessing sexual harassment allegations against DPP politicians and the kindergarten drugging controversy in New Taipei City, some voters have forgotten what outrageous things Ko has done.
Ko is quite good at bluffing and he has been learning from Internet influencers to market himself and his team. No wonder younger generations are attracted to him. Most of Ko’s young supporters have just left university. They are still looking up to their professors and ignorant of the importance of executive power.
Ko is just like the professor teaching birds to fly with theories of aerodynamics, as described in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan. Ko’s approval rate was low when he was Taipei mayor, and yet, he has lectured the public on national politics and governance. What in the world can he teach -— how to achieve the lowest approval rate among the nation’s mayors?
Ko’s problem is that he often applies a double standard and that he lacks the ability to implement his policy. To undermine Ko, the DPP should ask Internet influencers and key opinion leaders to create one-minute reels or memes explaining how complicated the government’s policymaking is.
The public should know that running a government is far from easy. It would not work by simply assigning former New Power Party chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) to the position of minister of justice and asking the well-known live streamer Kuan Chang (館長) to be the minister of national defense. It requires a lot of effort, not mere bluffing.
The construction of the Taipei Dome is a case in point. Over the course of eight years, the construction was stopped due to scandals, then started again in secret, only to be brought once again to a grinding halt. Right before Ko’s term ended, the construction suddenly began and was rushed to completion. Ko accomplished almost nothing, and to save money, he sacrificed the quality of education and the safety of the MRT system.
On the contrary, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Lai have been working hard to increase tax revenue through the “five plus two” innovative industries plan and “six core strategic industries.” Thanks to them, low-income families are exempted from taxes, and all Taiwanese were eligible for a tax rebate of NT$6,000.
Taiwanese should know that it is easy to mobilize people. We should also know that if we vote for a person who can mobilize the people, but lacks the ability to run a government, the future of our next generations will be bleak, just like Taipei’s shopping districts under Ko’s rule: falling apart one after another.
Robert Wang is a writer.
Translated by Emma Liu
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