Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: TPP/Facebook
KO WEN-JE OF THE TPP continues to be racked by scandal.
Ko remains in jail after having been jailed last week, with the overturning of his release without bail. The severity of Ko’s imprisonment is higher than previous arrests, during which he was mostly questioned by prosecutors. Ko has been sent to a prison in Tucheng and is to be treated as any other prisoner would be.
No new evidence was admitted by the judge in making the ruling against Ko to overturn his previous release, as appealed by prosecutors. Ko is held incommunicado, though some images have since surfaced of him wearing informal clothing. Ko claims that he does not intend to appeal his release.
Ko may be aiming to fame himself as a political martyr, then. His TPP has affirmed that Ko is innocent and lashed out against the DPP with the allegation that Ko’s imprisonment is a form of politically targeting opponents, with a TPP spokesperson Clark Lin alleging that the “next Xi Jinping is in Taiwan” with regards to Ko’s arrest. This proves ironic for a politician who has otherwise angled for closer ties with China through claims that there is “One family on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, with a common destiny” or through proposals to build a bridge between Kinmen and Xiamen.
Certainly, the martyrdom claim is what TPP supporters seem to believe, with 20,000 demonstrating outside of the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last Sunday. The TPP has demurred when asked if Ko would be removed from his post if found guilty, Streamer Holger Chen, who is close to the TPP, called on supporters to surround the Prosecutors’ Office in response to the arrest. A Ko supporter was also arrested for threatening to kill the responsible judges and prosecutors for the arrest.
In the meantime, Ko and his family members are still under scrutiny. A USB owned by a Ko has been reported as potentially having a record of a 15 million NT transaction. Likewise, the Core Pacific Group spending 430 million NT on publicity has been seen as potentially a way for the company to funnel bribes. While Ko had claimed to have only met with Core Pacific Group chair Sheen Ching-jing once, it is now reported that Ko actually met with him three times. Reports suggest that public servants involved in the case may have hung onto documentation to protect themselves and that some text may have been deleted. Similarly, while the TPP has accused DPP politicians of making up information, sometimes this is claimed to come from whistleblowers in the TPP.
TPP rally in support of Ko. Photo credit: TPP/Facebook
The finances of the Ko family have been particularly focused on. Ko’s wife, Peggy Chen, was found to have an increase of 6 million NT, with more than 1.537 million NT deposited in the ATM on a day that Ko met with KMT city councilor Angela Ying, who is also under investigation, and TPP legislator Huang Shan-shan, and Chen adding to the accounts of her and her children. Chen has defended these transactions as normal and simply intended to reduce the number of times she needed to visit a bank, but she has been criticized as behaving unusually in using ATMs for vast sums of money rather than online banking. Chen has claimed to be responsible for the purchase of expense offices for Ko near the legislature in a way that attracted scrutiny, claiming to be unaware of election subsidies in Ko’s bank account. Ko’s son has also been mocked for eating expensive steak in a public location while his father is in jail, rather than keeping a low public profile.
Politicians such as former Taipei deputy mayor and current Kaohsiung deputy mayor Charles Lin were questioned, as well as Taipei deputy secretary-general Lin De-chuan.
More scandals may soon hit Ko, with a foundation founded by Ko accused of laundering 27 million NT. Although in the wake of some reports, there were attempts to distance Ko from the foundation, the foundation is registered to the same address as Ko’s offices.
In the meantime, what stance the KMT takes on Ko is still ambiguous. A surprise guest at the rally in support of Ko on was Ma administration spokesperson Hsiao Hsu-tsen. Hsu Chiao-hsin, Wang Hong-wei, Hsieh Long-chieh, Lo Chih-chiang, Li Nian-zu, Alex Tsai, and associates of Han Kuo-yu were thanked at the rally, but few others attended. Reports suggest that the TPP hoped for more KMT politicians to attend, but that they were not successful in securing their attendance.
It may be that the KMT is divided on Ko. Some deep Blues have increasingly come out in defense of Ko, with Alex Tsai lashing out at a SET anchor that has reported on corruption allegations against Ko by suggesting that she sleeps with sources to get information. But according to former KMT legislator Apollo Chen, commenting that the KMT is likely wary that further allegations against Ko are damning and may tar the party by association.
Either way, cases of the TPP seeking KMT support–and receiving it from deep Blues–is probably to erase the distinctions between the two parties. At the same time, across the political aisle, former president Chen Shui-bian seems to have thrown his support behind Ko with an ambiguously worded statement. Chen may be aware that some members of the “Little Grass” who support Ko view Chen in a positive light.
Furthermore, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) has now weighed in on the matter, lashing out at the DPP’s “Green Terror.” This may be among the earliest instances that the TAO has used the “Green Terror” increasingly used by deep Blues. If so, the TAO may be signaling to deep Blues that they should step up support of Ko. Yet if this is what the TAO has decided on, the TPP’s ability to maintain a distinctive political brand from the KMT will be further eroded through association with deep Blues. Certainly, the TPP has itself embraced this narrative, claiming that the Lai administration is engaged in a “new authoritarianism.”