Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: George Hsieh/Facebook
TENSIONS BETWEEN the DPP and KMT are likely at a boiling point in Keelung, with conflict between KMT mayor George Hsieh and the DPP city council caucus having escalated dramatically in the past weeks.
The DPP city council caucus, which includes Keelung city councilor speaker Tong Zi-wei, former Sunflower Movement activist Jiho Chang, and lawyer Cheng Wen Ting, had begun a campaign to call for Hsieh’s recall. However, as it turned out, Hsieh and the Keelung KMT had already begun the process of pushing for the recall of the three DPP city councilors.
Nevertheless, Hsieh was accused by the Keelung DPP city council caucus of illegally using his family business in order to bolster the recall campaign. At a press conference, the Keelung DPP city council caucus produced a document stating that employees of Keelung’s Second Credit Cooperative had been asked to find four people each to sign a recall petition.
In particular, Hsieh hails from a political family that has long dominated local politics in Keelung. George Hsieh’s father, Hsieh Hsiu-ping, served roles in the Keelung city councilor, National Assembly, and Taiwan Provincial Assembly. Hsiu Hsiu-ping had, in turn, succeeded his father Hsieh Qingyun, who served on the Keelung city council and in the National Assembly.
The Hsieh family is seen as constituting a local KMT faction in Keelung. To this extent, while Keelung’s Second Credit Cooperative had been originally founded in 1922, with the dominant shareholders being the Yen family of Keelung, it came under the control of the Hsieh family in the 1960s and 1970s during a time of restructuring.
The DPP city council caucus was calling for Hsieh’s recall in light of several scandals, framed as abuse of power. This mostly pertained to Keelung’s E-Plaza shopping center, the largest mall in Keelung. While under Hsieh’s direction the mall is to become EAST COAST by BREEZE, as acquired by the Breeze Center chain of shopping malls, NET has pushed back against this.
NET became a part-owner of the E-Plaza shopping center in 2016, investing in the renovation and construction of its mall. Yet the Hsieh administration has taken the view that there was a breach of contract due to a fraud scandal that NET’s parent company became involved in.
The Keelung E-Plaza. Photo credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
NET has framed this as violating previous agreements, in changing an Operate and Transfer agreement to a Renovate, Operate and Transfer agreement without any legal basis. To this extent, NET took out newspaper ads accusing the Keelung city government of wrongdoing.
Especially controversial has been a raid conducted at night by police on NET. This was criticized as a case of the Hsieh administration attempting to strong arm the company. Likewise, Hsieh has been accused of failing to be transparent about his mayoral administration’s negotiations with Breeze, with relevant documents having gone missing, and online comments by netizens in support of NET deleted.
At stake, then, are a host of issues linked to potential issues of local corruption, clientelism, and possible kickbacks to politicians.
Indeed, the DPP has criticized Hsieh for corruption in the past. During the 2022 local elections, DPP candidate Tsai Shih-ying, has accused Hsieh of money laundering. Specifically, Tsai accused Hsieh of establishing shell companies overseas for money laundering purposes, so as to hide his wealth. Tsai has also alleged Hsieh of assisting in money laundering, due to links with individuals who later faced such charges, such as former Reliance Securities Company chair Lin Kuan-pai.
But, as returning to the Hsieh family’s longstanding power base in Keelung, DPP politicians have long sought to point to the wealth of the Hsieh family and how this makes them remote and distant from everyday people. For example, in the 2022 campaign cycle, Tsai pointed to an incident when Hsieh apparently lent 100 million NT to a friend highlighting how this is an unimaginable amount of wealth for ordinary people.
It proves another matter entirely if Hsieh has sought to use family businesses to rig democratic politics through the recall system. At the same time, as Keelung has historically leaned blue, it is unclear if there will, in fact, be public backlash against Hsieh.