TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — The plotting, intrigue, and shifting alliances ahead of the Kuomintang’s (KMT) party conference on July 23 are intensifying. Party Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) and party central are adamant in defending their pick for presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) and insist that he will still be their candidate come election day.
As New Taipei mayor, Hou had been the most popular politician in the country for years and was leading in all major presidential polls in December 2022. According to a recent poll, he is now the least popular local government head, and support for his presidential campaign has cratered, leaving him in third place in all polls since mid-May.
In previous columns we have followed this spectacular collapse, starting with the botched campaign launch, the extended period of near inactivity, his refusal to take any stances on any issues, his poor handling of scandals, and the plots to remove him and replace him with Foxconn founder Terry Gou (郭台銘).
Finally, Hou has started taking policy stances, opened a formal campaign office, and brought in a heavyweight campaign team led by the man widely credited with being the electoral king-maker behind former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), aka “The Knife,” to tackle all these problems. Hou has even received some good news: The scandal involving a preschool allegedly giving children barbiturates may, in the end, not have been true, and though questions remain about Hou’s administration’s handling of the case, it does mean the story should drop from the headlines.
However, as we examined in my previous column, King has not turned out to be the electoral whizz he was cracked up to be. While he has been helpful in organizing the campaign, he has turned out to be a big distraction and has, at many turns, undermined Hou and his campaign.
The "pygmy" king
Since that column was written, King has picked a very public and increasingly personal fight with two heavyweights in his own party, deep blue former lawmakers Alex Tsai (蔡正元) and Chiu Yi (邱毅). It has gotten so bad that Chiu, appearing on a popular pan-blue talk show, stated about King “I sincerely despise you” and “at internal fighting (inside the KMT) you’re a giant, but at external fighting (opposition parties) you’re a pygmy.”
Since King took over the campaign on July 1, Hou’s poll numbers have continued to languish in the upper teens, including in a new poll with Hou at only 17.6%. King managed to arrange a joint appearance between Hou and the KMT’s 2020 presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), via former KMT Tainan mayoral candidate Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介), in order to hopefully repair the strained relationship between them and to win over the famously loyal “Han army.”
Instead, the relationship appears to have gotten worse. It is so bad that Han is no longer willing to meet with Hsieh, in spite of there never being a problem in their relationship that I am aware of, and Hsieh said he has given up trying. Perhaps it is because Hsieh is now part of Hou’s campaign team.
Meanwhile, there are two or three factions trying to get Hou replaced as the party’s candidate. Two predate King’s arrival.
Hou keeps sliding in the polls, and many in the party feel he has no chance to win. Legislative candidates also worry that his unpopularity will drag down the whole party, and their chances of winning with it.
Go, go Gou
The faction supporting Terry Gou has been around since prior to Eric Chu’s announcement of Hou as the nominee and has been disgruntled since. KMT Legislators Jessica Chen (陳玉珍) and Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁), aka the "King of Hualien," as well as many local factional politicians like Nantou County Commissioner Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) are prominent supporters of Gou, and all three skipped a KMT event held by former speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) intended to show party unity behind Hou.
Chen is also the one who has called for the party to enact an “anti-brick clause” at the party conference on July 23, stipulating that any presidential candidate that falls below 15% must automatically be sacked. In the latest three polls, Hou has been between 17.1% and 19.1% in a three-way race, but if Terry Gou joins the race, several polls have shown Hou sinking below 15%.
Then on July 12, the most prominent Gou supporters in the KMT Central Standing Committee unexpectedly did not show up for the meeting. They had been expected to propose dumping Hou at that meeting, but now speculation is on the upcoming July 17 meeting.
No reason was given for their absence, but most likely they reckon they do not have enough votes, at least not yet. News outlet Next Apple lists eight committee members out of the 29-member body as publicly supporting ousting Hou, but also notes that others do not want it to be known publicly, leaving us with no clear picture of how much support this has. It is quite possible some may still be on the fence and are waiting to see if Hou’s poll numbers rise before making a final decision.
Ko, Han factions
There is also a pro-Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faction. Previously, several legislative candidates publicly stated they wanted to campaign with him instead of with Hou, hoping some of Ko’s rising support would rub off on them. This has died down since the party passed a rule explicitly banning candidates from campaigning with candidates not affiliated with the party without approval from the party, which everyone nicknamed the “Ko Wen-je rule.”
Others have been pushing for a “blue-white” alliance to topple the DPP between the KMT and TPP, including Eric Chu, with others even hoping for a joint presidential ticket. Ko has repeatedly ruled out a unity ticket, though he might be open to cooperation with the KMT in individual legislative races.
The third rebellious faction started after King arrived on the scene. It is led by KMT party list lawmaker Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and is calling for the party to dump Hou and replace him with Han Kuo-yu.
Cheng is a colorful character leading a colorful campaign to bring back Han. Her risky rebellion has also given more impetus to those calling to depose Eric Chu as party chair, though she herself has not gone that far.
In the next columns, we will cover Cheng and why, in spite of having lost the 2020 presidential race in a landslide, it might make political sense for the KMT to pick Han.
