Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) “will of course proactively” prepare to run for president after he steps down as mayor later this year, his wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), said yesterday.
Chen, a pediatrician at Taipei City Hospital’s Heping Fuyou Branch, said on Facebook that she has noticed over the past few days that news and political talk shows on TV have been discussing Ko wanting to run for president in 2024.
“I do not know why it has stirred up heated discussion, because my husband has already said many times that he is preparing for it,” she wrote.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“Not running in the [presidential] election would be news, and of course members of his own political party will support him, and his wife is no exception,” she wrote.
Ko won the Taipei mayoral elections in 2014 and 2018 as an independent, and founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in August 2019.
Chen said Ko had called her in September 2019 to ask her about her thoughts on him running for president in 2020, adding that he eventually decided against it, as he believed that some municipal tasks needed eight years to complete.
“After he steps down from his mayoral post at the end of this year, of course he will proactively prepare to run for president, or what else did you think?” she wrote, adding that running in an election is a citizenship right and whether an individual would get elected is another matter.
TPP Legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) has been another staunch supporter of Ko’s presidential aspirations.
“I, Tsai Pi-ru, am now 59 years old, and I ask for nothing for myself. My greatest wish for the remainder of my life is to send Ko Wen-je into the Presidential Office,” she wrote last week in a letter to TPP legislators, in which she invited them to a meeting on Friday to discuss election issues.
“This is why we formed the TPP in the first place. It is our greatest original intention, and this goal has never changed,” she wrote.
“To win [the presidential election] in 2024, [the local election in] 2022 is an important test... It affects chairman Ko’s path to becoming president as well as the future of the TPP in 2024,” said Tsai, who had worked with Ko’s medical team in National Taiwan University Hospital when Ko was director of the Department of Traumatology.
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