Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Ko Wen-je/Facebook
KO WEN-JE AND THE TPP continue to suffer successive political controversies, with regards to charges of corruption or mismanagement. At this point, it is probably accurate to deem the current controversies faced by the TPP as among the party’s largest political crises to date.
Firstly, Ko has been accused of acting to benefit the developers of the Core Pacific City Mall by increasing the floor area ratio from 392% to 840%. This would have allowed the mall to make an extra 40 billion NT.
Likewise, Ko has been accused of allowing Shin Kong Life Insurance to acquire the T17 and T18 plots of the Shilin Beitou Technology Park despite lacking an investment plan This would have been to benefit Shin Kong Life Insurance, seeing as his vice presidential candidate, Cynthia Wu, belonged to the family that runs the conglomerate.
Furthermore, TPP Hsinchu mayor Ann Kao was removed from office earlier this month and sentenced to seven years and four months in jail. Kao has since left the TPP. The acting mayor of Hsinchu, Andy Chiu of the TPP, has been criticized by the DPP for leaving the country on personal leave for vacation instead of staying to manage the issues faced by Hsinchu.
Ko’s wife, Peggy Chen, has also been accused of opening a coffee shop in her son’s name. The coffee shop, located in the same building as the TPP’s headquarters, was named after the “Little Grass” term used to refer to young Ko supporters. Chen is accused of opening a coffee shop under her son’s name in order to avoid laws on public servants registering businesses, seeing as she is the director of a public hospital. Chen initially apologized but later claimed to have been aiming to help out her and Ko’s child in terms of starting a business.
To this extent, the party has been accused of exorbitant spending during trips to the United States. In particular, what has attracted scrutiny is the party spending 890,000 NT on car rental fees while traveling. The party later claimed this was due to multiple transactions being listed together. Similarly, the party has been criticized for spending 960,000 NT on lunchboxes, with the store that the party reported buying from having been honed in on by netizens.
More generally, the TPP has faced issues with accounting for campaign expenditures. Following successive scandals involving companies that claimed never to have been paid for advertising work for the TPP and regarding a concert that the party claimed was for commercial purposes rather than campaigning, it has since emerged that the party declared no campaign expenditures last year in spite of fielding a presidential candidate. Otherwise, the TPP reported spending 71 million NT which included 37 million in personnel costs, and while spending 71 million NT which included 28.1 million NT in operation costs and 37 million NT in personnel costs. By contrast, the DPP reported 142 million NT in expenditures which included 62.4 million NT in campaign expenses, while the KMT reported 147 million NT in expenditures which included 23.2 million NT in campaign expenditures.
The TPP has attributed its financial issues to date to claiming that it had difficulty vetting the large amount of small donations it received. The TPP reported 30.9 million NT in donations from businesses and 46.6 million in individual donations. Though it proves unusual that the TPP reported no campaign expenditures, the TPP claims that such expenditures are accounted for in its other accounting.
Ko Wen-je. Photo credit: Ko Wen-je/Facebook
Ko has apologized a number of times for his party’s issues with accounting. TPP legislator Huang Shan-shan, who headed Ko’s campaign, has also apologized to party supporters. Huang has resigned from the party’s standing committee since the scandal broke but was asked by Ko to lead the team to tackle the party’s current issues.
According to the Control Yuan, the party’s leaders should have been aware of issues with false accounts making donations since last April, when there was a flood of such donations, even if the party claims to have been unaware of the issue until this month. It is noteworthy that to date the party’s attitude has been of contrition, rather than seeking to frame these events as political retribution from the DPP. Ko, however, denies having been informed this by the Control Yuan.
Survey data from the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation shows that the TPP’s recent stumbles have impacted the party’s support base with white-collar workers and the educated demographics that it historically has done well with. It is also possible that the TPP’s controversies will lead swing voters or light-blue voters who look to the TPP as an alternative to the KMT to distance themselves from it.
The blow to the TPP’s public image may prove similar to the TPP’s disastrous negotiations with the KMT about a joint ticket ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. After weeks of back and forth, the TPP and KMT failed to negotiate a joint ticket and instead squabbled publicly for hours on live television in a televised press conference involving Ko, Foxconn founder Terry Gou, former president Ma Ying-jeou, and KMT chair Eric Chu. What reflected poorly on Ko were reports that Ko had initially shrugged off the rest of his party to enter into a disadvantageous agreement brokered by Ma and had simply appointed an unqualified friend to be the party’s polling expert, resulting in further unfavorable terms for the TPP. If the TPP apparently had basic issues with its accounting, this could also reflect Ko appointing friends or supporters to crucial positions rather than the most qualified individuals. This is to be seen.
Yet it may be the case that splits are opening up within the party. After a four-hour meeting on Tuesday, Tuanmu Cheng, the accountant framed as responsible for the TPP’s accounting irregularities, and former finance chief Lee Wen-tsung were expelled from the party. Huang Shan-shan was stripped of her rights as a party member, meaning that while she will continue to serve as a legislator for the party, she will not only no longer be part of the standing committee, or be the party’s deputy caucus whip. This may be a U-turn, if Huang was previously asked by Ko to stay on to manage the crisis. Either way, this also likely means that Huang is not likely to be fielded by the party as the TPP’s 2026 Taipei mayoral candidate.
It is possible that the TPP aims to pin blame for the current stumbles faced by the party. Or, with some news reports suggesting that Huang is implicated in the Core Pacific City scandal, this could be an effort at damage control. But with Kao and Huang out, this also opens a power vacuum in terms of the party that would likely lead to greater space for party caucus whip Huang Kuo-chang.