Former presidential candidate Ko Wen-je has been held in detention over corruption allegations during his time as Taipei City mayor. As the leader of an alternative political force, the Taiwan People Party, Ko and his party face challenges ahead.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Tiffany Wong sits down with Dafydd Fell. Dafydd is a political scientist and director of Center of Taiwan Studies at SOAS University in London. We first zoom in on Ko and his corruption case, then zoom out to look at the implications for Taiwan’s political scene.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Tiffany Wong sits down with Dafydd Fell. Dafydd is a political scientist and director of Center of Taiwan Studies at SOAS University in London. We first zoom in on Ko and his corruption case, then zoom out to look at the implications for Taiwan’s political scene.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Zoom In Zoom Out, your global look at news from Taiwan.
00:17I'm Tiffany Wong.
00:18Former presidential candidate Kuo Wenzhe has been held in detention over corruption allegations
00:23after his re-arrest in early September.
00:26Kuo is now going to be held incommunicado for at least two months, meaning no contact
00:31with the outside world other than his lawyers.
00:34Now before we zoom in on the latest details with our guest today, let's take a look at
00:38how Kuo's supporters have been reacting.
00:40Our reporter Joyce Zeng was there at the rally the night that Kuo was re-arrested.
00:45Let's take a look.
00:46In Taipei, thousands of supporters of Taiwan's third largest political party, the TPP, are
00:53here outside the legislature protesting the re-arrest of their leader Kuo Wenzhe.
01:00Donned with emblems of the party's signature little grass icon associated with its youth
01:05and grassroots appeal, protesters and party reps claim the graft probe against Kuo is
01:11all a political witch hunt.
01:13Protesters here are accusing President Lai Ching-te's government of misusing the law
01:18and the media to suppress its opponents.
01:31Many here are holding signs that read Stand with Justice and Green Terror, a play on Taiwan's
01:37authoritarian era known as White Terror and the color of the ruling Democratic Progressive
01:43Party.
01:49You can watch the full report on the Taiwan Plus website.
02:02Now to discuss the further implications of this corruption case, we're joined today
02:06by Dafydd Fell in London.
02:08He's a political scientist and director of the Center of Taiwan Studies at Soas University.
02:13Dafydd, thanks for joining us.
02:16Yeah, it's great to be back on Taiwan Plus.
02:18Let's zoom in on Kuo Wenzhe and his case.
02:21But first, for viewers who may be unfamiliar with Kuo, how would you describe this third
02:25party leader?
02:26Well, he's definitely very different from other Taiwanese politicians.
02:30He emerged as a medical doctor who had a transition into party politics, first becoming elected
02:38as Taipei mayor, serving for two terms.
02:42Initially, he won a lot of support from more progressive groups in Taiwanese civil society.
02:49But over time, his main support base shifted to quite a different one.
02:55And that gave him enough to run quite a strong presidential election campaign in 2024, where
03:02he came a pretty good third place.
03:05And we saw that he got a lot of support during the election and still maintained a lot of
03:09support.
03:10And we saw thousands of supporters come out to that rally on his arrest.
03:14So how would you describe the demographic of his support base?
03:18Well, his support base is very youth-centered.
03:23There seems to be a much stronger support base among young men rather than young women.
03:29I think we can see that in the nature of his rallies.
03:33I think you're right that there was a significant turnout in support of him after the arrest.
03:41But I think we also see a significant drop in support both for Ke and his party.
03:48Ke had branded himself as an anti-corruption politician in many of his campaigns.
03:54And now he's at the center of his own corruption scandal.
03:57So was this shocking to you as an observer when you found out?
04:01What's catching your attention now as the case unfolds?
04:04Well, I think that anyone that's been involved in city administration is always going to
04:12be susceptible to these kind of land development accusations.
04:17We've seen this, for example, in the case of the former city mayor of Taoyuan, who is
04:22also currently under arrest on a land development case.
04:27But I think you're right that because of the way that he framed himself and the party
04:32as a party that was free of corruption, and they used this as a way of attacking the ruling
04:38Democratic Progressive Party and the main opposition party, the Kuomintang.
04:43So I think this is one of the reasons why a lot of his former supporters have become
04:47disillusioned.
04:48Nevertheless, I think we shouldn't rule out the importance of Ke and his party over the
04:55next three years.
04:58They still have eight legislators in parliament, which means that they hold the balance of
05:03power between the two political parties.
05:05So that's a very powerful position.
05:07Similarly, the support level has roughly been halved for Ke's party since January 2024.
05:16But they still have a roughly 10 to 15 percent support level, which is still significant.
05:24So going back to sort of the political alignments with other parties, we saw the TPP and its
05:31supporters saying that this is an act of a political witch hunt, even calling the DPP
05:37the green terror.
05:39Would you agree with these claims?
05:41Yes.
05:42I mean, this is quite a tricky question to deal with, because, of course, currently there
05:50are multiple similar cases in Taiwan's courts involving politicians from all three political
05:58parties.
05:59If we think about the Ke case, he's been prosecuted by the Taipei High Court, as far as I'm aware,
06:07which of course Taipei is under the control of the KMT.
06:11Similarly, if we look at public opinion polls, they suggest that the majority of voters don't
06:18see this as being a politically motivated legal case.
06:24And you also talked a bit about how the TPP still holds power in the legislature, the
06:29power to decide basically which bill passes.
06:33How has the KMT reacted?
06:35Have they been giving support to the TPP or trying to stay out of this corruption scandal?
06:40The KMT is in quite a difficult position when it comes to the Ke case and the DPP.
06:46On the one hand, the KMT needs the TPP support in Parliament, because without the TPP, the
06:54Taiwan People's Party, the KMT doesn't have a majority in Parliament.
06:58So it can't block DPP legislation or DPP appointments.
07:04On the other hand, the TPP and Ke is a major threat to the long-term prospects of the KMT.
07:12Looking ahead, I think the KMT really benefits from Ke's removal from the Taiwanese political
07:19scene, particularly looking ahead to the next presidential election.
07:23And I think we can see that the KMT is divided in terms of the way that they are dealing
07:29with this case.
07:31Some KMT politicians coming out strongly in support of Ke, while others are remaining
07:37on the sidelines, looking at the way that this case is going to develop.
07:42There's multiple corruption cases connected to Ke at the moment.
07:47So the KMT is in a quite difficult position.
07:54Now let's zoom out to look at the implications for third parties in Taiwan.
07:59Do you see the rise of any other independent parties who are trying to capture those voters
08:03who are dissatisfied with the DPP, the KMT, and now even the TPP?
08:09Well, the decline in the support of the KMT and the TPP since January 24 does create opportunities
08:18for other political parties.
08:22In the last election in January 2024, what I would call the progressive smaller parties
08:29that have their roots in civil society did very badly in that election.
08:32They lost all their seats and generally weren't competitive.
08:37And one of their big problems was that so many of their traditional supporters had switched
08:42to the ideologically quite ambiguous Taiwan People's Party.
08:49When we look at opinion polls in the last couple of months, it does look like some of
08:54those former Taiwan People's Party supporters have switched their allegiance to the New
09:00Power Party, which had fallen out of parliament in January 2024.
09:08I've always felt that there is a need for a genuine alternative party in Taiwan because
09:15there's a pretty significant number of voters who are dissatisfied with the two mainstream parties.
09:21The TPP has tried to fill that gap, but it's been quite ambiguous on a lot of issues beyond
09:29the central appeal of Colmerger's personality.
09:34Can you talk about the specific challenges that third parties face when trying to gather
09:37support in Taiwan?
09:39I think there's definitely a market there, but there are challenges to smaller parties
09:45becoming influential in Taiwan's party system.
09:49One of them, of course, is the electoral system, which is a predominantly single-member district
09:55electoral system, which really squeezes the space for smaller parties.
10:01Another one is the presidential election, which often overshadows the smaller political parties.
10:08I'm quite glad to see that a number of those smaller parties have been holding discussions
10:14about how to cooperate and not undercut each other.
10:19There is a number of these kind of progressive smaller parties that have the possibility
10:27of playing a role in Taiwan's party system.
10:29But with that market, do you think now there's an extra level of trust that these third parties
10:35need to gain, especially with Ko Wen-je's corruption scandal?
10:39Of course, that's important.
10:42But because these progressive parties, such as the Green Party Taiwan or the New Power
10:49Party, are not in office, they're not really susceptible to those kind of corruption allegations.
10:57So they're going to be going into the next round of elections with a relatively clean
11:03image.
11:05They will have other challenges, for example, raising sufficient finance to run campaigns.
11:12They need to make sure that they have candidates that have star appeal or that can appeal beyond
11:17their kind of core base.
11:20And they need to have a stronger organization, which has, again, traditionally been a problem
11:25with these smaller challenger parties.
11:31The TPP is an example of a third party that really gained prominence because of its leader,
11:37Ko Wen-je.
11:38But this now is, you know, causing problems for the party as its leader is undergoing
11:44this corruption scandal.
11:46Do you think this is something that other third parties need to be aware of?
11:49Is this a common trend in Taiwan?
11:51Well, I think to a certain extent, the pattern that we see with the Taiwan People's Party
11:57shows similarities with that of the People's First Party of the early 2000s, which was
12:05very reliant on a single party leader as its core party image.
12:10That was James Song.
12:12But once his popularity declined, then that party gradually also faded away.
12:18At one point, it had been a competitor to the Taiwan's second largest party.
12:25In a similar way to the TPP, for much of the period between 2020 and 2024, the TPP was
12:32often polling on a similar level to the KMT.
12:39But being too reliant on a single star, I think, has its risks.
12:42And I think the smaller progressive parties are aware of that.
12:47For the TPP, is there a TPP without Ke?
12:50Are they now trying to distance themselves from him as he undergoes this corruption investigation?
12:56I think it's very difficult to do when you've been so reliant on a single personality.
13:02Of course, Ke does, or the TPP does have a number of what I would call, they're quite
13:09well-known politicians.
13:11People like the former New Power Party leader, Huang Guocheng, or the former People's First
13:18Party legislator, Huang Shanshan.
13:22These are quite well-known politicians, but I'm not sure whether many TPP supporters are
13:29supporting the party because of their allegiance with these secondary politicians.
13:36So of course, the party can survive because it still has these eight legislators in parliament.
13:43They'll stay in position for the next three and a half years.
13:48But I think the party has really become a political vehicle for Ke, and I think that
13:56it's hard to imagine the party surviving without him in the same way that we see with the People's
14:03First Party.
14:04Oh, thank you so much for joining us.
14:06It was great to hear your insights today.
14:09Thanks.
14:10It's always good to be on Taiwan Plus.
14:12This has been Zoom In Zoom Out.
14:14For more stories from Taiwan Plus News, you can follow us on our social media.
14:17Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.