Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that if everything goes well and he remains healthy, he plans to run for president in 2024.
Ko made the remark while being interviewed on an online political talk show at noon.
Ko’s remarks came after his close aide, former Taipei City Government adviser Tsai Pi-ju (蔡壁如), on Tuesday during another interview said that Ko is likely to run for president in 2024.
Photo: screen grab from YouTube
Asked to comment about concerns from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) supporters that if Ko runs for president in 2024, it might affect Gou’s chances of being elected if he decided to run, Ko said: “Do not worry about four years from now. We do and prepare what we should, and that is enough.”
The talk show host asked Ko if he agreed with media personality Huang Wei-han’s (黃暐瀚) opinion that a determining factor in Jan. 11’s presidential election results would be who the approximately 580,000 people that voted for Ko in the mayoral election last year decide to vote for.
Ko said that political supporters do not necessarily support a politician all the way, because if so, the Taiwan People’s Party that he founded would have gained a support rate of about 20 to 25 percent.
In the interview, Ko was asked why he decided not to run in this presidential election, as he had been viewed as a strong contender.
He said that one of his concerns was that if he ran for president and won, but had no legislators on his side, it would be difficult to operate the government.
There are still many ongoing projects in Taipei that he should deal with, Ko said, adding that Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, has taken leave to run for president, which has caused the city’s municipal administration to stall.
“It would be better to focus on running for president after leaving the post [of mayor], or else one could fall between two stools,” Ko said.
The host asked if Ko meant he would run for president in 2024.
“If everything goes well, I will run [for president],” he said, adding that he would gradually prepare for that goal.
Ko said that his health would have to be good, because he was the director of National Taiwan University Hospital’s surgical intensive care unit for 17 years and believes that “man proposes, god disposes.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods