Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) yesterday returned to Taiwan after lying low for more than two weeks.
Gou left the country in the middle of last month after Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) beat him in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary by 17 percentage points.
Gou returned on a private airplane which landed at Taipei International Airport (Songshan Airport) at about 3pm, said Amanda Liu (劉宥彤), a senior member of Gou’s primary campaign team and chief executive officer of Yonglin Education Foundation.
He had not informed staff at the campaign office of his return and was not prepared to speak to the media, she said.
Gou would need a few days to rest, review things that happened in Taiwan in the past two weeks and collect his thoughts, before responding to questions from the media, she said.
His office is planning to hold a fan meeting to thank his supporters, but it has yet to decide its form, scale and location, she said.
Asked about a petition supporters launched last month calling on Gou to run for president as an independent, Liu said the tycoon hoped supporters would take care and be careful of the heat and afternoon storms.
Gou has urged people to remain rational and instructed his secretary to buy flowers for a professor who was attacked by a fan of Han on Sunday, she said.
The 71-year-old professor, surnamed Chen (陳), was reportedly punched in the face and kicked in the groin by the Han fan while collecting signatures for Gou in Taipei’s Da-an Forest Park.
While abroad, Gou had continued to make Facebook posts about policies he had advocated during the primary, giving the impression that he could launch an independent presidential bid.
In his last Facebook post on Tuesday, Gou said he had arranged free health checkups for Taoyuan’s Shulin New Village, which has come to be known as “the cancer village” due to the high percentage of residents diagnosed with the disease.
“There is a lot more we can do on health,” he said, adding that his policy plan to transform Taiwan’s healthcare industry into a trillion-dollar global business would benefit public health and the economy.
“Helping the nation and the people will always be my goal,” he said.
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