Just when the public and the media had grown tired of the never-ending rumors that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) leadership has been planning to oust its presidential candidate, Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), in an attempt to salvage the party’s seemingly doomed campaign, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) decided it is time to take things up a notch.
Taking advantage of his gentleman-like appearance, which has sometimes been likened to that of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Chu has climbed the political ladder so quickly at such a young age that many senior KMT members have had no choice but to take the back seat and acknowledge the end of their era.
Harmless as Chu might seem, his ambition to one day hold the top office is not all that subtle.
However, he is definitely good at playing the game of “I am running for KMT chairman or president only because my party needs me.”
Following the KMT’s disastrous defeat in Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections last year, Chu volunteered to clean up the mess left by Ma and shoulder the responsibility to restore the party to its former glory.
He said at the time that in the KMT’s darkest hour, he could not turn his back on his party and “must” vie for the party chairmanship.
Chu’s ostensibly heroic act was not unexpected, yet it was hailed by his party comrades as courageous. The move was largely interpreted as part of his efforts to mimic the political trajectory of Ma — who won the KMT’s presidential nomination in May 2007 after staying at the party’s helm for nearly one-and-a-half years, a post he was forced to resign only three months earlier due to his indictment for corruption — to pave the way for his presidential bid.
Were it not for the KMT’s plummeting support ratings and Ma’s alleged insistence that Chu seek re-election as New Taipei City mayor last year, Chu would most likely have followed his career plans and joined the presidential race.
He also would not have been stuck in the special municipality just to honor his oft-stated pledge to be a responsible mayor who serves out his term, waiting for his second shot at presidency in 2020 or even 2024 if the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) does not lose public trust and support as quickly as the KMT would like.
Luckily for the 54-year-old, he is apparently cut out for acting and knows how to seize an opportunity.
After Hung’s support rates plunged from a high of 46 percent to less than 20 percent in the past two months, Chu knew that if he did not act now, the KMT, and his own career, could go down the drain along with Hung.
In August, he reportedly started voicing the possibility of him pairing up with another senior KMT member in January’s election. Probably frustrated by the fact that Hung has only grown more adamant about running for president amid rumors that the KMT intends to remove her, Chu seems to have resorted to a two-handed strategy in an effort to clear the obstacle that stands in his way.
On the one hand, he pretends to be a concerned leader by calling for party solidarity, while on the other he tacitly lets other KMT members explore ways to revoke Hung’s nomination.
The outcome of Wednesday’s meeting of the KMT Central Standing Committee was probably the result of this strategy.
As always, Chu urged the KMT to unite and pledged to work out a solution with Hung to address their shared difficulties. Yet, behind closed doors, he let a motion to oust Hung at an extempore party congress pass without even putting it to a vote.
There is no shame in wanting power, but it is certainly mortifying for someone to pretend they do not want it when they are practically wearing their ambition on their sleeves.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs