It remains to be seen whether there is a future for the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), seen by some as a one-man party centered on its chairman, Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), and whether he could settle the differences among in-party factions.
Ko — who entered politics 10 years ago to run in the Taipei mayoral election and founded the TPP four years ago — lost his presidential bid in Saturday’s election, although he garnered 26.46 percent of the vote.
While his abilities in traditional campaigning methods were questionable, since the start of the presidential election, Ko has been known to excel in online campaigning. As smartphones and PCs have become the most important platform people use to receive news and information, his online campaigning played an important part in attracting young people’s support.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
As Ko set off on a nationwide motorcade campaign in the two weeks before election day, it became clear that his number of supporters — including many senior citizens — in central and southern Taiwan could not be underestimated. The large crowd at the TPP’s election-eve campaign rally on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei also demonstrated Ko supporters’ strong cohesion.
However, Ko’s campaign, lacking long-term cultivation in local organizations and mobilization, ultimately could not win him the presidency.
By winning 22.07 percent of the party votes in the legislative elections, the TPP secured eight legislator-at-large seats — fewer than its initial expectation.
The election results reflected that the Ko campaign team’s core decisionmakers were incapable of grasping reality and were used to embellishing and exaggerating data when making decisions.
For one, former TPP secretary-general Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) says Ko’s campaign chief of staff Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) ought to be held accountable for the election results.
Whether Ko could maintain his publicity and influence and run for president again in four years depends on how much influence the TPP’s legislative caucus has in the Legislative Yuan, and whether Ko would be able to intervene in the caucus’ decisions.
GRASSROOTS MEMBERS
Although higher-level TPP officials said that Ko, as the TPP’s chairman, would continue to influence the legislative caucus’ operations, some grassroots party members are still concerned he would lack the authority to ask legislators-at-large to resign and thus have insufficient binding power and be unable to influence decisions.
After losing Saturday’s presidential election, the party’s “turbulent undercurrents” among its factions have also surfaced. Aside from those who predominate the party’s legislative caucus — legislator-at-large-elects Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and Lin Kuo-cheng (林國成) — there are still unclear variables.
These variables include whether those centered around Hsieh are to have further action; whether Huang Kuo-chang, who only just joined the party, would have ambitions to gain power in the party, and whether former TPP legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如), who lost the legislative election by a small margin in Taichung, is to return to the party’s core decisionmaking circle.
Ko, no longer a civil servant, would finally have time to manage a political party, and as he said on Saturday evening, he would work hard on training a prodigy. The future of the “one-man party” depends on whether Ko is successful in managing the party in the upcoming years, whether he could train new political stars and whether the party could devote itself to providing services locally.
The answers to whether the strong cohesion of Ko’s supporters and the 22.07 percent of the party votes could hold up the party, and whether the party could break the spell of a short-lived “one-man party” and successfully transform into a “third force that can accept diversified opinions would make themselves known in the next local elections in 2026.
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