Ko must address the lies
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) lost to Vice President William Lai (賴清德) by nearly 1.9 million votes in Jan. 13’s presidential election. However, some of Ko’s and TPP’s supporters claimed that voter fraud was to blame for the discrepancy between the party’s polling and the official results. Cognitive warfare waged on TikTok helped to circulate their accusations, but everyone knows that elections in Taiwan are just and transparent, and that voter fraud is extremely unlikely. This is recognized by democratic countries throughout the world. On some video-sharing platforms, Taiwan’s elections have been misrepresented, a distortion harmful to all Taiwanese.
When a mature and sensible politician loses an election, they reflect upon themselves and review their failures. They try to figure out why the majority of voters did not support them. They correct their mistakes and fight again. Ko is not like that.
He knew that no fraud could occur in Taiwan’s elections, but he still attributed his defeat to it. Soon after he realized that the public would not buy his claim, he changed tack, blaming the low voter turnout among younger people for the defeat.
Before the election, most of the polls showed that Ko would finish third. That he could successfully secure 3.69 million votes was already surprising to many. Some people lamented the result, wondering how someone like Ko, a person who is neither thoughtful nor sincere and talks in an incoherent and confusing way, could win the hearts and minds of so many Taiwanese.
A nation’s leader must be mature and stable. They must be a person of integrity. Judging from his political career, Ko lacks the ability and leadership to govern.
When he was Taipei mayor, many people quit their jobs and left the city government because of him. In other words, those who worked under him left him after they had a chance to learn more about him.
During his two terms as mayor, Taipei residents learned that he was not a good mayor, and as a result, they did not vote for Ko in the presidential election.
Ko’s approval rating were the lowest in districts and areas in Taipei, the election results showed. Reports said that the residents of a Hsinchu County village where Ko grew up did not favor him either. These local results say a lot about his character.
Ko’s supporters are mostly young people in their 20s. Once they grow older and accumulate more life experience, their loyalty to Ko would likely decrease. The more mature they are, the less supportive of Ko they would become. Ko knows this, and it is a problem he needs to deal with.
Some of Ko’s followers are students in middle and high schools. They do not have adequate experience to see through Ko, and their source of information is mostly from Chinese video-sharing platforms such as Douyin, the version of TikTok for the Chinese domestic market. As a result, they tell their parents their views and believe that Ko lost the election due to voter fraud. They have fallen victim to China’s cognitive warfare efforts.
While their accusations are absurd and false, Ko should not leave such misinformation as it is. As a politician in Taiwan, he should clarify the issue and take responsibility in protecting Taiwan’s democracy.
Chiu Ping-chin
Taipei
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