At the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) National Congress on Monday last week, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) was unanimously approved as the party’s candidate for next year’s presidential election. During the event, Hou went out of his way to show goodwill to former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜).
However, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), who sought the KMT’s presidential nomination earlier this year, is still clamoring about staying in politics no matter how many oppose him. The farce drags on, but the best is yet to come.
Not long ago, Hou was the darling of the opinion polls, but just two months later the same surveys have sent him reeling.
When adrift at sea, any piece of floating wood seems like a treasure, and Hou hardly has any core ideology or values of his own. While he used not to compromise with the hardcore “deep blue” members of the KMT and its “corrupt elements,” he now seems to have gone the other way, moving closer to the “deep blues” and embracing Han. Perhaps it is the result of spending too much time with people such as Gou and Taiwan People’s Party Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
Hou and Han were elected as mayors in 2018, but the following year, Han set his sights on the presidency, while Hou kept out of it. In 2021, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) heavily promoted four national referendums, but Hou said he would “respect the will of the people.” In March, when the KMT stoked controversy with its “report on the central committee’s election strategy,” Hou said that money gained through corruption should not be accepted in any political party.
All along, many nonaligned voters gave Hou the thumbs-up for his centrist approach. The attitude of those swing voters was bad for Han and Chu, but good for Hou, whose popularity kept climbing.
At the time, at least one other politician took a cool view of the surging tide of support for Han. That person was Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), then a Taipei city councilor and now the mayor of Taipei, who claims to be the great-great-grandson of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石). Chiang Wan-an was overheard saying that Han’s supporters were rather irrational.
Now that Hou’s opinion ratings are flagging, he has forgotten his former steadfastness and is trying to please those irrational Han supporters, but in so doing he has scared off a larger number of rational voters. That is a high price to pay, and it might not be the only thing he loses.
Hou tells an unusual version of the story of democracy, saying that back in the day, then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) made some “bold moves” that allowed Taiwan to become democratic more quickly.
However in reality, Chiang Ching-kuo’s time in power was blood-spattered. The 1979 Kaohsiung Incident was followed by the murder of democracy advocate and lawyer Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) mother and twin daughters in 1980, the killing of Carnegie Mellon University associate professor Chen Wen-cheng (陳文成) in 1981 and the 1984 assassination of writer Henry Liu (劉宜良), who wrote under the pen name Chiang Nan (江南). There were countless less notorious cases.
Chiang Ching-kuo’s KMT government linked up with members of the Bamboo Union gang to go to California and kill Liu, a naturalized US citizen who was born in China. When details of the case came to light, it caused an uproar.
Consequently, then-American Institute in Taiwan chairman David Dean held a meeting with then-representative to the US Fredrick Chien (錢復) and told him that the case met the conditions of an amendment to the US’ Arms Export Control Act that was introduced by then-US representative Stephen Solarz and passed by the US Congress after Chen Wen-cheng was murdered in 1981. The amendment prohibited arms sales to countries that engage in a “consistent pattern of intimidation and harassment” against US citizens.
Does Hou have selective amnesia regarding these “bold moves” by Chiang Ching-kuo?
Taiwan’s democratization process started in the post-Chiang Ching-kuo period, after 1988, when it was vigorously promoted by his reform-minded successor, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
At first, this process was hindered by rich and powerful members of the “mainlander” ruling class and by the struggle between the KMT’s mainstream and non-mainstream factions. In 1989, this impasse led Freedom Era Weekly magazine publisher Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) to burn himself to death in protest. Hou was at the scene of that incident in his role as a police captain.
Thereafter, the government of then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) appointed officials based solely on their ability, so Hou became director-general of the National Police Agency. That role is one of the reasons he won the support of Taiwan-centric and centrist voters.
Chen Shui-bian’s presidency, which was the first time in government for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), ended in failure, while that of his successor, the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), did not end well either. The current DPP administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) might not be perfect, but at least it is cleaner than that of Chen Shui-bian.
However, what people find annoying is that Hou, who was an official in Chen Shui-bian’s government, only accuses Tsai’s government of being corrupt. This looks like another case of selective amnesia. The most corruption went on in the KMT during the presidencies of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo.
Hou’s attitude shows how much of a KMT man he really is. The two Chiang presidents were more corrupt than Chen Shui-bian, but the KMT painted him as even more corrupt to make the Chiangs look lily-white. Now they are accusing Tsai of corruption, while letting Chen Shui-bian off the hook as he is their lesser enemy.
Before the KMT began the process of selecting its candidate for next year’s presidential election, Hou was devoted to governing New Taipei City. His image as someone who handled things in an honest way gained him a high degree of support. One important reason for his widespread support was that he kept his distance from ideology, national identity and political disputes, raising hopes that he would continue along the same route.
However, that made some people in the pan-blue political camp worry that Hou might turn out to be a second Lee. As a result, he has failed to come up with a grand plan for national governance. It is hard to govern a municipality and prepare for a general election at the same time, and the off-stage actions of Gou and Han have not helped.
Consequently, Hou’s public opinion ratings have fallen as his supporters drift off to other candidates. In an effort to turn his fortunes around, Hou has cozied up with Ma, Chu, Han and Gou, and started declaring his support for the “1992 consensus” and opposition to Taiwanese independence.
However, in so doing he is drifting further away from mainstream public opinion. Those who originally accepted the prospect of a “Hou-style change of ruling party” must be getting more hesitant following his shift toward the “deep blue” end of the political spectrum. The more pro-localization pan-blue voters must be becoming disillusioned, and this could well deal the mortal blow to Hou.
In Taiwan’s political sphere, when you get near to “deep blue,” you are not far from “red.” Ko seems to be undergoing a similar change of political hue.
Hou says that Taiwan is being pushed toward the brink of war and that the DPP in power risks military confrontation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. This viewpoint is precisely that of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its Taiwan Affairs Office, and that of dictatorial leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
By echoing Beijing’s talking points, Hou is telling the democratic world that he has no clue that China is a provocateur who wants to use armed force to change the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait.
Slogans such as “yes to peace, no to war” and “there can be no economy and industry without peace,” are being bandied about, but when applied to Eastern Europe, they sound a lot like someone claiming that Ukraine invaded Russia.
Why are presidential candidates who say such things standing for election? Who will really be in power if they are elected? No one will know until the votes are counted.
The game is far from over, and judging by the present situation, it is hard to say whether Hou can turn his fortunes around.
However, Gou, Han and even Ko have succeeded in making Hou drift away from centrist and Taiwan-centric voters and closer to the “deep blues.”
Translated by Julian Clegg
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