Former presidential candidate Ko Wen-je and others from his Taiwan People's Party are facing multiple corruption scandals, a big political hit for a party once seen as a rising alternative to Taiwan's two-party system.
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00:00I would also like to apologize to the supporters and partners of the campaign.
00:09A public apology from the campaign finance chief, a former presidential candidate Kowinto,
00:15in response to allegations of corruption.
00:17The campaign now says that it misreported expenses totaling more than half a million U.S. dollars.
00:24In one example, more than 150,000 U.S. dollars were marked as being paid to a public relations company,
00:30which the company says it never received.
00:33The campaign also failed to report revenue from a concert ostensibly held as a fundraiser,
00:37which it now says was a purely commercial event.
00:40In total, the campaign says 17 expenses were misreported, blaming the errors on an outside accountant.
00:47Ke, a former Taipei mayor and head of the Taiwan People's Party, is standing behind his team.
00:53All of our expenses have been corrected.
00:57They were all spent on election-related matters.
01:00More importantly, they didn't end up in anyone's pocket.
01:05I can assure you that we will continue to work hard.
01:08We will not be crushed by any setbacks.
01:14It's just one of several corruption scandals hanging over the party.
01:17Peng Zhengsheng, deputy mayor of Taipei under Ke,
01:21has been barred from leaving the country after he and Ke were implicated in a suspicious real estate deal
01:26dating from their time in office.
01:28It's been a difficult six months for a politician once seen as a rising star
01:33and disruptor of the country's two-party status quo.
01:36And so he initially politically debuted in 2014.
01:39He framed himself as a beyond blue-green distinction.
01:43And in this way, he'd benefit from being independent at a time in which the public seemed to hope for alternatives.
01:49And so coming up as a new third party in that way, I think that actually was a disruption of the status quo.
01:54But at a certain point, he came to be seen as grandstanding on national issues
01:58rather than paying attention to very local mayoral issues.
02:01And so then his rating fell dramatically.
02:04The TPP's cooperation with the main opposition, KMT,
02:07and its pushing of controversial reforms has seen its popularity plummet.
02:12One recent poll showed Ke's Taiwan People's Party with an approval rating of only 6%.
02:17Even the party's apology press conference was disrupted by a protester.
02:25But just how bad is the political damage from these scandals?
02:28And with Ko as the party leader, if he falls, then that party has no future.
02:33And that also does mean an end to his presidential ambitions.
02:36But it's also possible that this will become part of his political brand,
02:39that the controversy will glance off of him.
02:42And he will manage to frame himself as being targeted politically by the TPP government
02:46in a way that benefits them.
02:47Unpopular and facing criminal investigations,
02:50the question is whether Ke and his party, who only recently shook up Taiwanese politics,
02:55can put aside recent scandals.
02:57Or is this latest revelation too much to recover from?
03:00Alex Chun and Chris Gorin for Taiwan Plus.