While Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) recalls his eight years as Taipei mayor, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been missing those good old days during the eight years of former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) rule. If the TPP and the KMT do not cooperate, neither can win the presidential election in January. They are hypnotized by the public opinion polls supporting a power transfer, hoping to join hands with their political rivals just to gain power.
Ko and his mother regard New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the KMT’s presidential candidate, to be no more than a policeman-turned-politician and less knowledgeable than Ko. Ko is the man who loves touting his high IQ. How could he serve as Hou’s running mate?
The KMT regard the TPP as a upstart that cannot be compared to its more than a century of history. How could Hou serve as Ko’s running mate?
Still, in their minds, a “blue-white (KMT-TPP)” ticket would be a “winning move.” Although it is a “risky move,” if they do not play the game this way, they are sure to lose. However, will there be a backlash from their supporters if they were to cooperate with each other for power?
Rumor has it that if a Ko-Hou ticket is formed and elected, the KMT would appoint the premier and form the Cabinet for the first term. If the KMT and TPP can win more than half of the legislative seats, a KMT lawmaker would serve as the legislative speaker. Who would not be drooling over the chance of acquiring such power?
Unfortunately for them, Article 84 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) states: “Anyone who makes a candidate or a person qualified for a candidate agree to abandon the campaign or to perform certain campaign activities by asking for expected promises or delivering bribes or other undue benefits to the aforesaid party shall be imprisoned and fined.”
Do Ko and Hou think that judges and prosecutors are dummies? If someone makes a presidential hopeful a running mate by secretly promising them to be the one to appoint the premier or legislative speaker, they can hardly conceal the secret. It is a classic example of a “quid pro quo” arrangement.
We should not look at today’s judiciary with the party-state mentality of the past: former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as well as Ma were all prosecuted.
If Ko and Hou test the law in the election, will both of them be detained, resulting in an electoral duel between Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, and Terry Gou (郭台銘)? Let us wait and see as the election drama unfolds.
Chuang Sheng-rong is a lawyer.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017