Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) seems to be in deep water lately. An opinion poll released by online news outlet My-Formosa.com shows that while Vice President William Lai (賴清德) continues to lead with 35.3 percent, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) has climbed back to second place with 18.8 percent, surpassing Ko’s 15.1 percent.
Yet, the drop in ranking is nothing compared with Ko’s plummeting support among young people, an age group considered Ko’s “iron base.” For the first time, Lai has a much higher support rate in the 20-29 age group with 43.3 percent than Ko’s 27.7 percent; Ko only surpassed Lai by 4 percent in the 30-39 age group.
As young people grow disenchanted with Ko — mainly due to Ko’s misogyny, and the bad manners and irrationality of his supporters — and with no hope of breaking southern Taiwan, Ko has been desperate to find new supporters, and his solution seems to be pairing up with people involved in shady business.
According to Internet celebrity Liu Yu (劉宇) and others, the heads of the TPP’s Taipei offices, Chen Ta-yeh (陳大業) and Wang Chen-hung (王振鴻) respectively, are members of the Saint Wenshan Group, the largest network branch of Hongmen, a pro-unification Chinese secret society in Taiwan.
TPP executives in Tainan last weekend endorsed the candidacy of Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教), a former KMT Tainan City Council speaker who has a reputation of being associated with “black gold,” bribery, influence peddling and illegal gangster activities.
Other TPP office heads in southern Taiwan were also accused of involvement in usury, abusive debt collection practices, pimping and prostitution.
As accusations and evidence continue to pile up, it is ironic that Ko’s founding claim was to create a “white force” that transcends the blue-green limits of Taiwan politics and it seems only yesterday that Ko, riding on the hopes of the public to bring reform and a new beginning to politics, was put in the Taipei mayoral office in 2014.
As a desperate attempt to save his flailing support, Ko obviously has no qualms embracing people with shady pasts — the very people that he swore to give a wide berth when he first set out to reform the political sphere. As power and money corrupts, it is all the more worrisome and unnerving when someone with a criminal past is put in a position that has access to both. As these people promise to “turn over a new leaf,” it should be up to the party to be vigilant and keep them at arm’s length instead of flaunting their presence without shame.
Of course, people should always be given second chances, but it is hardly acceptable if these people were to become heads of offices, political candidates or given prominent positions. If left unaddressed, would the TPP not end up becoming a potential backdoor for these people to further their gangster or pro-unification activities under a legitimate cause?
For a party founded on “clean politics” and “transparency,” this affiliation has only tarnished its image and proved Ko to be another politician who cannot “keep promises,” his party’s own slogan. Despite the criticism, Ko seems unperturbed by the backlash. After all, he did say that the ideal TPP should work like the “Society of Jesus” and that he would “deliver those around him from evil and set them right.”
If Ko is relying on his supporters’ idolization of him to get him through this crisis, he had better think again. Forming close ties with shady people would only prove to be a poisoned chalice in the long run, as a large percentage of his supporters were made up of highly educated elites, young people and independent voters. For these people, the TPP’s affiliation with alleged criminals would be a step too close to “gray” or “black.”
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