Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) recently reiterated that he is “deep-green at heart,” a remark that pro-Taiwan supporters found dubious or even held in disdain.
The “deep green” faction is a pro-indigenous force that promotes Taiwanese sovereignty by putting Taiwan’s interests first. That Ko had the audacity to make a series of “anti-indigenous” moves, such as saying the “two sides of the Strait are one family,” condemning the idea of countering China and safeguarding Taiwan, proposing to revive plans of a cross-strait service trade agreement with China and partnering with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for his own political interests, have shown that he is not as “deep green” as he claims to be, for these were all intolerable actions in the eyes of pro-Taiwan supporters.
There is no way Ko is “deep green” at heart, and his comments are no more than a ploy to save his flagging polling numbers and campaign.
While Ko said the he hates the KMT, but hates the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) even more only a while ago, his claim to be “deep green” at heart has only proven him to be either schizophrenic or a political flip-flopper. If Ko considers himself “deep green,” why would he vow to transcend the KMT and DPP, establish the Taiwan People’s Party and run for president in the first place? It would have saved him a lot of trouble if he had just joined the DPP and supported Vice President William Lai (賴清德).
Ko said that he would follow in President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) footsteps regarding the military and diplomacy. Nevertheless, he has always claimed that Taiwan should maintain positive and “equidistant” ties with the US and China, condemned the US’ military arms deal as “Taiwan paying out of its own pocket for flat drill bits,” and compared Taiwan to “merchandise on the shelf” to describe the Taiwan-US relationship.
Different ludicrous remarks have always echoed the ideologies of pro-China supporters, which are in sharp contrast to Tsai’s policies and stances. Ko would be mistaken if he thinks the public could be so easily duped by his words. By messing up the “blue-white alliance,” Ko is now reverting back to “deep green” supporters to make up for his lost support from the pan-blue camp. Such opportunistic conduct only paints him as a shameful and sordid politician.
Lai Yen-cheng is a graduate student at National Chiao Tung University.
Translated by Rita Wang
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS