TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Kuomintang (KMT) Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) is expected to announce the party’s presidential candidate on Wednesday, May 17. Unusually, Chu decided to forego a primary, and will be making the pick himself in consultation with the party’s legislative caucus, local government heads, key members in the party and the public, while also continuously reviewing “scientific data.”
Chu may now be kicking himself for having waited so long. Not long ago, the consensus was it was likely to be New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), and if Chu had announced his candidacy earlier there would have been some grumbling from some quarters in the party, but since it was viewed as inevitable, they would have left it at that.
Hou was ahead of his main rival, Foxconn founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), in the polls. Gou had little backing in the party, got crushed in his previous primary run in 2019, and isn’t even qualified to rejoin the party until September — though the party can change the rules to allow him in earlier if they choose, as they did in 2019.
Gou then launched a campaign offensive on several fronts, including holding public policy briefings around the country on his "Terry Gou has something to tell you" tour, “support Gou banquets” that have been well attended by KMT bigshots and has held four major mass campaign rallies that drew large, enthusiastic crowds in the many thousands.
His policy tour has seen some controversy, but it has also seen him continuously dominate the news cycle for weeks. The banquets initially targeted lawmakers, but now they’re going after the jugular, inviting KMT central standing committee members right on the eve of the party’s candidate announcement.
There is now so much feverish press attention and speculation that the state-owned Central News Agency (CNA) even ran Gou's “Terry Gou Kinmen Peace Declaration” in its entirety. Usually, running the entire text of speeches is reserved for big occasions like presidential inaugurations.
Gou has also revved up the KMT base by going on the attack against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, accusing them of obstructing the importation of the BNT vaccine during the pandemic. The administration vehemently denies it, but the battle has been breathlessly followed in the press.
Gou’s counter-intuitive coalition
Some KMT politicians have stated that they sense the wind direction is changing in the party in favor of Gou. There are also rumors that in internal KMT polling, Hou and Gou are neck-and-neck, though I haven’t seen any hard figures being published.
Hou is clearly spooked. Over the last week, he’s finally broken his silence on what some of his thoughts are on cross-strait issues and declared he was against “One Country, Two Systems” as well as against Taiwan independence.
Clearly, he did that under pressure. There are elements in the party who have long suspected Hou is a “Lee Tung-hui (李登輝) 2.0” secret “Taiwan secessionist” and Hou had to act to staunch the flow of people moving towards Gou.
Inside the party there are growing pro-Hou and pro-Gou factions. Hou still has the edge with KMT legislators, with 20 backing him, four or five supporting Gou, and over ten yet to declare.
Gou, however, has formed a counter-intuitive coalition of deep-blue hardliners, who are mostly from 49er families that fled the Chinese Civil War, and the generally light-blue patronage faction politicians whose families have been in Taiwan for hundreds of years. It’s striking to see lawmakers like deep blue Jennifer Chen (陳玉珍) and Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷) siding with convicted felon Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) and candidate Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) of the Taichung Black Faction coming together in support of Gou.
The reasons for this unusual coalition is that Gou is ideologically deep-blue and a 49er himself, while the patronage factions are all about money and power, and neither necessarily through ethical means. Hou was, prior to entering politics, the Director-General of the National Police Agency and is generally a law-and-order kind of guy of the type the factions fear, while Gou is all about making money.
Vying for the “Han Army”
Though I haven’t seen any public pronouncement, the mighty Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) veteran’s branch of the party, which is heavily 49er and deep-blue, is likely backing Gou. Former general and KMT lawmaker Wu Sz-huai’s support for Gou is a big tipoff.
Apparently, however, the also powerful but more disparate “Han Army” of fans of former Kaohsiung Mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Daniel Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) are split. That makes sense, both Gou and Hou have publicly disparaged Han in the past, though Hou more subtly, and in the end he relented and did show up at some Han campaign rallies.
However, Gou recently apologized to Han for his attacks during the 2019 primary and he’s been actively courting them through Han-style rallies and Han-style statements. Han only gave a cryptic response, and no open acceptance or endorsement of Gou, in spite of their ideological similarities. In fact, he appears to want to keep out of this fight altogether.
Eric Chu definitely needs to get his party on board and unified once the candidate is announced, but now it’s shaping up that the party is splitting badly over the issue and Hou and Gou look more evenly matched now.
Hou’s slight edge with the public
As for the public at large, in hypothetical presidential matchups with Hou and Gou as the candidates, an early May My-Formosa poll had Hou doing 3.4% better. Similarly, a Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) poll that came out soon after had Hou’s support 3.7% higher than Gou’s with voters.
However, the very latest ACEL poll found voters supporting Gou over Hou by 2.2%. Assuming these polls are trustworthy (which is questionable) averaged out, Hou has a slight edge, but within the margin of error.
Gou’s support beats out Hou in the north, while the reverse is true in the south. For Chu, this gives Hou the edge strategically. With Hou at the top of the ticket, that could give a bit of a boost to KMT legislative candidates in the south, where the KMT often struggles.
Hou is also an experienced and disciplined politician, whereas Gou is a neophyte with a history of gaffes and thin-skinned outbursts. That being said, Gou is a quick learner and he’s clearly improved since his 2019 primary run, he’s done a remarkably good job of dominating the news cycle, and his improvement from his first mass rally to his fourth one is striking.
There are two notable drawbacks with Hou. One is that many in the powerful KMT elites, which are dominated by the 49ers, simply don’t trust the native Hoklo-speaking (Taiwanese) Hou, and there have been long-standing rumors they want to block him.
The other is that Hou only recently won re-election as New Taipei Mayor. This is less of a problem than with Han Kuo-yu’s run in 2019 after only having won his first term as Kaohsiung mayor only months before due to Hou’s previous term as mayor and his serving for years as vice mayor, but it’s still not a great look and some will be turned off by it.
Fear of Gou bolting
Another consideration for Chu is that this is likely to be the last chance to run Gou as a candidate, and worse, if Gou isn’t picked, he’s rich enough and ego-driven enough to get enough signatures to run as an independent or even start a new party. Gou has stated he would support Hou if he was the eventual nominee, but few believe him considering his long history of broken promises.
Gou is using his free agency to pressure Chu. The other day, he called up Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) likely presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and had a meeting.
There has been a lot of talk in the past of a Ko-Gou or Gou-Ko ticket. That seems unlikely considering the egos at play. Who would take the vice presidential spot?
There is one possibility, however, and that would be a deal where one is the presidential candidate and the other would be offered the premiership of the Executive Yuan if the presidential candidate won. I wouldn’t bet on this, but it definitely isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Hou, on the other hand, can be kept in reserve for future elections. At age 65, he’s got more opportunities to run in the future than the 72-year-old Gou.
Another factor is money. I would bet that if Chu is seriously considering Gou, he has explored the idea privately with Gou of him self-funding his presidential campaign, or donating a considerable amount to the party.
For the cash-strapped KMT, that would be a big win. It would allow them to allocate more resources to the legislative races.
In last November’s 9-in-1 local elections, Chu went out of his way to pick more moderate, disciplined candidates that weren’t likely to make the kind of deep-blue comments that some KMT politicians are prone to make and which turn off mainstream voters. If Chu sticks with that pattern, he’s likely to go with Hou.
Still, there are compelling reasons he could go with Gou. Chu is a smart strategic politician (most of the time), so he’s got a lot to think over.
