With just 30 minutes to spare before the deadline, former lawmaker Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) submitted her application to run for party chair in the upcoming Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) by-election following the resignation of party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Jan. 1. Being held incommunicado in jail and facing indictment for corruption and pilfering campaign funds made it rather awkward for Ko to run the party.
Whether Tsai Pi-ru had intended to add a little last-minute “will she, or won’t she” drama or not, she seemed genuinely unsure of her path forward in the days prior.
Her decision pits her against acting party chair and legislative caucus convener Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌). The election is set for Feb. 15, with results to be officially announced on Feb. 19 with the term lasting until Dec. 31 next year.
Photo: Taipei Times
These two characters are strikingly different, and would offer different visions for the future of the party. Considering the headwinds the party is facing, this choice could be existential for the nation’s third-largest party.
What they do have in common is they are uncommon politicians with colorful backstories, making them two of the most fascinating characters in Taiwanese politics.
We will start with Tsai Pi-ru.
Photo: Chang Hsuan-che, Taipei Times
‘MOTHER OF THE TPP’
Tsai Pi-ru may be the only politician able to compete with Ko in frumpiness, but she is quite charismatic in interviews. With a resting face that always looks like she is smiling, a twinkle in her eye, sharp banter and clever wit, it feels like she’s letting you in on something important others do not know. Tsai Pi-ru and Ko were close colleagues at National Taiwan University Hospital — she was a nurse and he a doctor — for 20 years prior to entering politics. They co-authored two editions of a book on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which likely did not make anyone’s book club list.
When Ko decided to run in the Taipei mayoral race as an independent in 2014, Tsai Pi-ru was brought along for the ride on the campaign team and was appointed Ko’s chief of staff when he won. She had a reputation for competence and some dubbed her the “underground mayor.”
In 2019 it was reportedly her that filed the paperwork founding the TPP and she is party member 002. She is commonly referred to as the “mother of the TPP” in local media.
In 2020 she joined the party’s legislative caucus on the proportionally appointed party list. She was one of the highest-profile TPP figures by this point.
In the 2022 election year, Taiwan’s politics was gripped by “thesis madness,” where politicians of every stripe had their theses examined for plagiarism. It turned out quite a few from across the political spectrum had done so.
Tsai Pi-ru was stripped of her master’s degree from Tamkang University after they claimed she had plagiarised 16 percent of her thesis. To this day she maintains her innocence but resigned her legislative seat.
‘WRETCHED DEATH’
In the runup to the 2024 national elections, Tsai Pi-ru did something wildly unexpected but bold: She announced she would run against the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) then-deputy speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) in the Taichung 1 District.
She explained her decision to run against the powerful incumbent in an unfamiliar city was to take on a new challenge, spread the TPP brand and said “I am a courageous Taiwanese, I must challenge New Tide.”
Many in the TPP and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have a special loathing for the DDP’s secretive and powerful New Tide faction, in which Tsai Chi-chang is a powerful figure.
The KMT did not nominate a candidate in that district and helped her campaign. Tsai Pi-ru was impressed by their professionalism.
Though she lost, it was only by just over 7,000 out of 160,000 votes total. Very respectable for a politician parachuted in from a new, smaller party.
Around this time she and Ko had a falling apart. It is unclear what started this, but Tsai Pi-ru began blaming Ko’s failed “united presidential campaign” talks with the KMT for her loss, attacked Ko as lacking the skill to manage people and sarcastically attacked the people he relied on as “elitist.”
She said about returning to party central at the time that “I just do not want to” and she “would die a wretched death” if she did. Her invitations to some party events “accidentally” failed to arrive.
With an eye on a future run, she announced she wanted to stay in Taichung and “deeply plow” the area, or set down roots locally.
She accepted a position as a consultant to Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen’s (盧秀燕) administration, who had campaigned with her and with whom she got along well. For a while, Tsai Pi-ru faded from the scene, away from the bright lights of the Taipei-centric news media.
‘UNCURABLE’
With Ko detained, the press’s gaze returned to Tsai Pi-ru. Prosecutors have questioned her as a witness, but she has not been charged with any crimes.
At least not yet. What did she see, or not see, when she served as “underground mayor?”
There does seem to be more speculation on the involvement of other figures in the party, suggesting her duties may not have overlapped in these issues. She was also in Taichung when the alleged pilfering of campaign funds was supposed to have happened.
As the situation intensified and the party started holding more and more rallies and events, Tsai Pi-ru began to appear at more and more of them.
In late December, she resigned her position in Taichung and announced she wanted to return to party central, apparently no longer fearing a “wretched death.”
Clearly she wants to help save the party she was so instrumental in founding, but I wonder if Ko’s absence following their falling out is a factor.
Following the resignation, Mayor Lu said that Tsai Pi-ru’s feelings for the TPP were “extraordinary” and “uncurable,” suggesting perhaps Lu was disappointed at failing to get Tsai Pi-ru to join the KMT.
Tsai Pi-ru’s first test of her popularity came on Sunday when running for a seat on the party’s central committee. She won a seat, but ranked fifth among the nine winners.
That does not bode well for Tsai Pi-ru.
ORIGINAL RECIPE
Tsai Pi-ru embodies the original vision of the movement more than other major figures in the party — she helped craft it from the start.
She is practical, pragmatic and gets things done — which is what Ko stated the party was established to accomplish.
Though she shares the party’s dislike of New Tide and some other opinions, unlike Huang her language is far more toned down and less conspiratorial. Huang says things like “Ko is sacrificing his corporeal body to protest the DPP hunting him down” and states, as if it were fact, that President William Lai (賴清德) and the DPP are colluding with prosecutors to use the judiciary to eliminate Ko and his movement.
Tsai Pi-ru adds “if” to statements like that, aware she does not have any proof of these allegations.
She is also known for her organizational skills and competence, though she admits she can be tough on people.
Though her pedigree in the party is impeccable, how well does she still get along with Ko? When they meet, the body language is awkward.
She might get the movement back onto its original footing, minus Ko, which could be a good thing. On the other hand, not having Ko’s stamp of approval could limit her significantly.
Additionally, if she wins, there could be conflict between her as head of the party and Huang heading the legislative caucus that actually wields power in government.
Huang Kuo-chang comes with a whole different set of baggage, as we will examine in an upcoming column.
Donovan’s Deep Dives is a regular column by Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) who writes in-depth analysis on everything about Taiwan’s political scene and geopolitics. Donovan is also the central Taiwan correspondent at ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Follow him on X: @donovan_smith.
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