Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) needs time to think and is unlikely to meet with Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) any time soon, Gou’s campaign office said yesterday.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Monday announced that Han had won its primary, defeating Gou and three other rivals.
Gou, who placed second, “will probably not meet with [Han] any time soon, as he needs some time to think things through,” said Amanda Liu (劉宥彤), a senior member of Gou’s campaign team and chief executive officer of the Yonglin Education Foundation.
Photo: Hung Su-chin, Taipei Times, courtesy of Hit FM
“He did not give us more information,” she added.
Liu made the remarks during an interview with radio show host Clara Chou (周玉蔻) on Hit FM, saying that Gou would probably go abroad for a while and might have new ideas when he returns.
Hopefully, people will focus their attention on Han as Gou takes some time off to gather his strength, she said.
Gou would “work for the Republic of China in his own way,” she said.
Asked whether Gou would run for president as an independent, she said the question is misleading and deliberately promoted by certain people.
Gou wanted to sign a contract pledging not to run for president if he loses the primary, but the KMT rejected his proposal to organize a public event for all candidates to sign the document, she said.
That Gou did not sign the contract might have affected his support rate in the poll, Liu said.
Asked about a rumor that Gou’s son and Syntrend chairman Jeff Gou (郭守正) had met with an aide to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to discuss collaborating in next’s year’s presidential election, Liu said Jeff Gou told her that such a meeting never took place.
Terry Gou appeared relaxed when she visited him shortly after the KMT announced the primary’s result on Monday, she said.
He told campaign staff to take some time off and instructed his assistants to deliver on the promises he had made on the campaign trail, such as helping promoting business transformation and charity work, Liu said.
While Terry Gou was initially unhappy with the primary poll method, he did not complain about it after the result was announced, she said.
However, when she was observing the polling process along with the representatives of the other candidates, she noticed that many respondents lied about their age or gender so that they would be sampled, Liu said.
For example, “I heard a very old man on the telephone saying he was a woman in her 20s. How can you not tell?” she said.
“It is obviously ridiculous, but not invalid,” as interviewers cannot determine which respondent not to trust, she said, adding that she has reported the matter to Gou.
KMT deputy spokeswoman Hung Yu-chien (洪于茜) said the poll was conducted fairly and transparently.
At the end of every polling session, all the samples were confirmed and signed off by the representatives before announcing the poll results, she said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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