Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) on Wednesday said he would seek the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nomination for next year’s presidential election.
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), for many the top choice to run for the KMT, has been in the media spotlight for prevarication over whether he would throw his hat in. Since the Lunar New Year holiday, Hou has been acting as if he were under pressure to “take the crown.”
His behavior is reminiscent of another KMT member four years ago. After Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) was elected Kaohsiung mayor in 2018, he enjoyed a rapid ascent to stardom, and the KMT picked him as its presidential nominee.
Hou soon fell from grace. He lost the presidential election and was recalled as mayor.
The KMT has apparently not learned its lesson. Had it left Han as Kaohsiung mayor instead of having him enter the presidential race, things would be different.
To be president, candidates need to make solid cross-strait policy proposals, but Hou’s cross-strait experience is limited. He was invited by the Straits Exchange Foundation to participate in the investigation of the 1994 Qiandao Lake kidnappings of Taiwanese in China and was director-general of the National Police Agency from 2006 to 2008, with some of his work requiring cooperation with China.
However, his experience stopped when he became New Taipei City deputy mayor in 2010.
For Hou, questions about China and cross-strait relations are not easy. If he, without any preparation and guidance, were to go head-to-head against Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential nominee, in a debate of those issues, the outcome would not be pretty.
The History of Ming says that Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), the founder of the Ming Dynasty, accumulated military power and surrounded himself with talented people, but refrained from making a bid for the crown when he was building his kingdom. Hou should learn from Zhu’s example.
Shih Ya-hsuan is an associate professor in National Kaohsiung Normal University’s Department of Geography.
Translated by Rita Wang
A response to my article (“Invite ‘will-bes,’ not has-beens,” Aug. 12, page 8) mischaracterizes my arguments, as well as a speech by former British prime minister Boris Johnson at the Ketagalan Forum in Taipei early last month. Tseng Yueh-ying (曾月英) in the response (“A misreading of Johnson’s speech,” Aug. 24, page 8) does not dispute that Johnson referred repeatedly to Taiwan as “a segment of the Chinese population,” but asserts that the phrase challenged Beijing by questioning whether parts of “the Chinese population” could be “differently Chinese.” This is essentially a confirmation of Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formulation, which says that
On Monday last week, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene met with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers to discuss Taiwan-US defense cooperation, on the heels of a separate meeting the previous week with Minister of National Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄). Departing from the usual convention of not advertising interactions with senior national security officials, the AIT posted photos of both meetings on Facebook, seemingly putting the ruling and opposition parties on public notice to obtain bipartisan support for Taiwan’s defense budget and other initiatives. Over the past year, increasing Taiwan’s defense budget has been a sore spot
Media said that several pan-blue figures — among them former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), former KMT legislator Lee De-wei (李德維), former KMT Central Committee member Vincent Hsu (徐正文), New Party Chairman Wu Cheng-tien (吳成典), former New Party legislator Chou chuan (周荃) and New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) — yesterday attended the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. China’s Xinhua news agency reported that foreign leaders were present alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) is expected to be summoned by the Taipei City Police Department after a rally in Taipei on Saturday last week resulted in injuries to eight police officers. The Ministry of the Interior on Sunday said that police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by an estimated 1,000 “disorderly” demonstrators. The rally — led by Huang to mark one year since a raid by Taipei prosecutors on then-TPP chairman and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — might have contravened the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), as the organizers had
RSS