Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Ko Wen-je/Facebook
FORMER TAIPEI MAYOR Ko Wen-je has been sentenced to 17 years in jail and 6 years of being deprived of his civil rights. This marks a heavy sentence for the founder of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) founder, who ran as the TPP presidential candidate in the 2024 election. Before his legal troubles in the last two years, Ko continued to be a presidential hopeful.
Ko is accused of taking 2.1 million NT in bribes in connection to the Core Pacific City Mall. The bribes were in return for enlarging the floor area ratio of the mall in order to give the Core Pacific Group more real estate. Likewise, Ko came under scrutiny for other financial irregularities, such as that the TPP declared no presidential campaign expenditures in the 2024 elections and Ko appears to have used the proceeds from a fundraising event to buy an office for himself.
Ko can appeal the ruling, as this is the ruling in the first instance. Nevertheless, the largest immediate impact may be that Ko’s chances for running for president in 2028 have been ruled out. Individuals who face jail terms of more than ten years in the first and second instance ruling cannot run for president even if the appeal process is still underway.
Ko was previously imprisoned for over a year in order to prevent collusion. Ko has faced scrutiny over the possibility that he destroyed evidence, including a cell phone that went missing during a trip to the US. Ko’s secretary Hsu Chih-yu, nicknamed “Orange” and popularly referred to as such in the media, fled to Japan in order to avoid being taken into custody for questioning and still remains at large.
Earlier this month, Ko had applied to fly to Japan to attend his son’s Ph. D graduation. This was denied due to the possibility of a flight risk. Even so, Ko and his family used the incident to criticize his imprisonment, and argued that this was unfair.
It may not be surprising that the TPP has claimed that Ko’s legal troubles are simply a form of political persecution from the DPP, claiming that Ko had been taken into custody on flimsy evidence. The party was largely built around Ko, so as to provide Ko a vehicle for future presidential ambitions. The TPP’s colors of white were chosen to differentiate the party from both the KMT and DPP, as well as suggest that the party was free of traditional political corruption.
As the sentencing today shows, that may no longer be the case. Likewise, the party has since drifted toward close political alignment with the KMT, siding with the large pan-Blue party on all of its controversial initiatives in the past two years—including cutting the government budget, freezing the Constitutional Court, and seeking to expand legislature power. Li Zhen-xiu–the first China-born individual to enter the legislature–is also a TPP legislator, marking that the party has also drifted into alignment with the KMT on cross-strait issues.
Even so, Ko supporters demonstrated today in Taipei, affirming Ko’s political innocence. With Ko in jail, but martyred in that way, acting chair Huang Kuo-Chang will continue to call the shots for the party. Huang is likely to frame his actions in defense of Ko, seeing as the TPP was originally built around Ko’s support base. If Huang is genuinely loyal to Ko, he may seek to push for legislation that would allow Ko to run for president in spite of his jail sentence of over ten years. Or Huang may use Ko’s jail term to maintain control of the party, having largely pushed aside other party heavyweights, and instead position himself as the TPP’s presidential contender.
At the same time, even if Huang had secured verbal agreement from KMT leaders that they also back the TPP in calling for Ko’s release, it is unclear to what extent the KMT will lean into advocacy for Ko. The TPP, after all, is currently an ally but could prove a political liability in the future, as occurred when the two parties failed to form a joint alliance for the 2024 election.
As for Ko himself, it is still to be questioned if he will actually go to jail. Other TPP politicians that faced jail time, such as Hsinchu mayor Ann Kao–who originally faced seven years and four months in jail for embezzling subsidies meant for assistants–eventually were cleared of charges. Ko, too, may get off free. But the most significant implication may be regarding whether Ko is prevented from running in 2028 presidential elections and acting as TPP chair.