Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has said that if he still does not know whether he should run for president when NT$500,000 earmarked to run his official Line account is used up, then he might not run next year.
Ko made the remarks during a livestream by Internet fitness celebrity Holger Chen (陳之漢) on Sunday night.
Chen asked Ko if he would run for president and whether he would support President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) re-election bid if he does not to run.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Ko said that he was like a rock being carved by outside forces, citing the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) listing of him as a possible contender in its poll to decide its nominee.
“Although I often criticize Tsai and the DPP, that does not make me their enemy,” Ko said.
As a citizen, he would see if the DPP or the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate can persuade him that they could do a better job than him as president, Ko added.
Jokingly describing Tsai and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘), a KMT presidential hopeful, as “two large golden cows,” Ko said that one has the nation’s money and the other his company’s money, which are unlimited, so it is difficult to tell who would win.
He has NT$500,000 from his wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), to operate his official Line account, and would not run for president if he still has not reached a decision by the time the funds are used up, Ko said.
Asked to elaborate yesterday, Ko said that Tsai and Gou have almost unlimited resources to run for president and he felt more like “an ant” when compared with them in terms of funding.
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