Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), who is vying for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) nomination for next year’s presidential election, has made several controversial remarks in the past week, making him a topic of discussion among local media, political talk shows and even environmental groups.
Despite a few party members having already expressed their intent to run for president, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) on March 22 announced that the party would not be holding a primary for its presidential nomination, but would instead reference opinion polls and make a comprehensive assessment in naming the strongest candidate.
In 2019, Gou lost the KMT’s presidential primary and left the party on bad terms, but he last month officially apologized to the party and announced his desire to run for president, asking the KMT to “give him 30 days” to express his views to the nation. The KMT said it respected his plan.
Gou has since been on an “advice-seeking tour” across the nation, meeting with local politicians and influential figures. He began outlining his policy plans, of which many were highly controversial and some he later apologized for, saying they were poorly expressed.
He said that Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft would no longer encircle Taiwan if he is elected, he would establish a Taiwanese robot industry within three years and use 80,000 robots to fight the PLA if it attacks the nation, that he would eliminate scam syndicates within six months of becoming president, and that the government should be led by CEO-like leaders who can monitor themselves without legislative oversight.
Gou also said that people “will get lung cancer” if they vote for the Democratic Progressive Party, referring to the use of coal-fired power, as the ruling party has a “nuclear-free homeland” policy. He instead suggested building a small modular reactor (SMR) near Kaohsiung’s Banpingshan (半屏山), and suggested that SMRs should be built in every administrative region.
Despite political commentators saying that many of Gou’s ideas are ridiculous, impractical or gaffes, he dismissed the criticism, saying that “it is impossible for me to be so naive, and for my policy ideas to be so careless and unprepared, when I am seeking to run for president.”
However, his comments have raised concerns about his competency, as he seems to lack knowledge of democracy, public governance and reality in Taiwan. AI-based real-time public opinion analysis platform QuickseeK showed a significant spike in online negative public sentiment toward Gou in the past week.
As a few KMT figures have said the party has already decided to nominate New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), and with the party still ambiguous about when it would announce its final decision, it is no wonder that Gou, who is still not a KMT member, is anxious to prove his popularity and influence by making bold remarks.
Chu yesterday maintained the party’s ambiguity around the KMT’s decisionmaking mechanism, only saying that it would name the best candidate this month. It therefore remains to be seen whether Gou is still in the game, or whether he is being used by the KMT to stall while Hou prepares, diverting criticism that Hou could be a “runaway mayor” like former KMT Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), who ran for president in 2020.
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