TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Either King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) has a secret plan to destroy the KMT's Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) presidential campaign from within, or the hype about his supposed prowess at winning campaigns has gone so much to his head he thinks he can do no wrong.
I cannot think of any reason why King, aka “The Knife,” would want to intentionally wreck Hou’s campaign, which suggests that ego-driven incompetence is the likely answer. It’s becoming clear that it was not King who won all those elections, but rather the candidate, former Taipei Mayor and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
No matter what one thinks of Ma’s ideology, it is undeniable that he was tall, handsome,and carried himself like a leader. He was such a good candidate he seemed almost genetically engineered in a lab for the purpose.
King does not seem to have realized that Hou is no Ma.
On July 23, KMT Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) pulled off a coup by heading off a revolt within the party aimed at toppling Hou and staging an almost flawless National Congress. After much bitter internal warfare the party showed unanimous support for Hou as it’s pick to lead the nation. True, the turnout was low, but there was a very public reconciliation between Hou and the KMT’s 2020 presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜).
The press overall seemed impressed with the show of unity and by the next day the head of My-Formosa polling said that preliminary polling data showed Hou’s support was up 2-3%. This was the first time in a long time that his poll numbers had risen rather than fallen.
Looking up for Hou
All the bitter infighting between KMT big shots that had been dominating headlines for months had gone eerily quiet. Finally, all the disloyalty to Hou and talk of replacing him that King had been so bitter about was gone. Things were finally looking up.
Now King, Hou and their surrogates could go into overdrive, meeting with key figures in the party to try and cement this newfound party unity by building relationships with those whose loyalty was likely still only superficial. They could work with Han to win over the support and loyalty of his “Han army” of supporters.
With the party united, they could bring up Hou’s abysmally low roughly 60% polling among KMT supporters to something approaching the levels enjoyed by the other presidential candidates with their own bases. That, in turn, would add several more percentage points to Hou’s poll numbers and start closing the gap with second-place holder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
This would add to the sense that momentum was on his side, and if they could overtake Ko, create the impression that Hou was the natural challenger to frontrunner Lai Ching-te (賴清德) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
However, they had to act fast and work to solidify relationships with key former rebels. If they were too slow, one or more of the rebels might start to speak out again and take a wrecking ball to party unity, once again plunging it into chaos.
They did not accomplish any of those things. Two days after the Congress, a big shot in the party rebelled against Eric Chu, made comments undermining Hou and in the process blasted the KMT’s fragile unity to pieces.
Slashed to pieces
The problem is the wrecking ball was King Pu-tsung himself.
At the Congress, Chu delivered a speech. In it, he said: “Today, we are going to unite and form a non-green ruling coalition, an opposition alliance. In the future, together, we will work for Taiwan and the Republic of China. We will be a governing coalition that stands for peace, stability, fairness, and justice. How does everyone feel about that?”
This was met with loud applause and calls of support from the KMT delegates. Chu and the party brass have been calling for unity among the opposition parties, namely the TPP, to “take down the DPP” for a while now.
In this speech, Chu was a little clearer on what the carrot is: to include the TPP in a governing coalition. The day after the Congress, Hou affirmed his support for the idea.
King decided he hated the idea, and thought it would be a good idea to make it as public as he could. He said a governing coalition would “exterminate our own might and further others' ambitions” and “if we enter it, the KMT will be gobbled up, this coalition can’t be let to happen,” among other attacks on the plan.
In short, King was saying it was his choice to make, and he was overruling both Chu and Hou. This was nothing short of jaw-dropping.
Leninist lines
The KMT was established on Leninist lines, and the party chair is the big boss. King merely works for Hou as his campaign manager.
This would be like the assistant to a department manager in a company ordering around both the immediate boss and the CEO, and doing so publicly. This prompted former KMT lawmaker and media personality Alex Tsai (蔡正元) to call Chu an “incapable ruler,” adding that “King Pu-tsung thinks himself the party chair” and King was “promoting internal chaos.”
He also appeared to lack confidence in Hou, saying he had little confidence Hou could gain the support of 90% of KMT supporters.
King was not done sowing chaos, he also decided to reignite his public personal feud with KMT legislative candidate Luo Chih-chiang (羅智強), thereby ensuring Luo’s friends and allies would turn against King and by extension, the Hou campaign. Luo is a media darling with a strong social media following, so, his pushback also generated plenty of headlines.
Luo is now claiming that a “high-ranking” person in the Hou campaign is paying an “internet army” to attack him and his family online, which the Hou campaign denies. No one has any question as to who he was referring to by saying “high-ranking” person, because if he came out and said a name he could be sued if the allegations turned out to be unprovable.
King had destroyed Chu’s carefully constructed but fragile peace in the party, and with that gone the same divisions re-erupted in the party and the knives were back out publicly. Speaking on what King had done and the divisions it had unleashed, KMT legislative candidate Cathy Yu (游淑慧) said she had never been afraid of attacks by the DPP before, but that now the internal “killing and slashing atmosphere” did frighten her.
Hou banished
What Hou said or did virtually disappeared, buried under the avalanche of coverage of acid negativity inside the KMT. Just when Hou should have been able to gain traction, King banished him from view.
The KMT acknowledged it had “run into problems” but that everything is fine now and the party and the Hou campaign’s communications are now “smooth.” Reports are suggesting that is not the case and that Chu is furious. The reports cannot be confirmed, but no one could blame Chu if it’s true.
Though there was that small bump in the My-Formosa poll right after the Congress, the latest poll conducted by QuickSeek has Hou stuck at 18%. King’s reign over the campaign has produced zero results in building support for Hou. However, in smashing apart party unity and attacking the party’s candidates, he has done considerable damage to the party in the legislative races.
When King took over the Hou campaign, the DPP was worried about a “King Pu-tsung effect,” but if I were more conspiratorially minded I would be questioning if King was actually working for them. That is highly unlikely. Rather, I think he is simply an ego-driven incompetent who wants all the attention for himself.
But maybe he secretly wants the more ideologically similar Ko Wen-je to win. Hmm …
