Analysis: TPP Faces Uncertain Future Amid Wave of Scandals
The opposition Taiwan People's Party and its leader, former presidential candidate Ko Wen-je, have endured a nightmare week under the cloud of a scandal over false reporting of its accounts. It's the latest setback after the party's strong performance in January elections. To find out where it leaves the party, TaiwanPlus spoke to political analyst Courtney Donovan Smith.
Transcript
00:00Koenger and his Taiwan People's Party have had a very difficult week.
00:04Can you tell us a little bit about this latest scandal?
00:07This whole thing broke and this is two, I guess you could say influencers, and the two
00:13of them did some investigating into the TPP's finances and then the TPP had to hold a press
00:22conference admitting there were irregularities in 17 entries for over 18 million NT.
00:31So big questions about, you know, these irregularities.
00:35Now the party claimed that these were accounting errors and then at the same time more details
00:43start coming out.
00:45So for example, a lunchbox is costing 900 and some odd thousand spent on tissues, 400
00:55and some odd thousand spent at one campaign rally in Tainan.
00:59Kerr has tried to build his brand based on efficient governance and clean governance.
01:04Do you think these scandals are something that he can possibly recover from or is it
01:07going to be too much?
01:09It really looks very bad that, you know, An Gao, his vice mayor, the companies that
01:14he, you know, hands all his marketing to, you know, all these people around him that
01:21he presumably chose are being investigated for corruption.
01:26Now if they're found guilty, that will be a pretty serious blow to people's perception
01:33of his abilities to run anything, really.
01:39But if this goes up the chain and he becomes embroiled in it, you know, then definitely
01:46his career is finished.
01:47Now I don't know if he can bounce back even from just surrounding himself by corrupt people.
01:54I don't know.
01:55Again, we're going to have to see how this plays out.
01:59Kerr and the TPP surprised a lot of people with their strong performance in January's
02:03elections, getting 20% of the vote countrywide.
02:06Where do you think those supporters are going to go now if they decide that they don't want
02:10to keep supporting Kerr and the TPP?
02:13And I think that, I think that the third part of your question, there's probably what's
02:18going to happen with a lot of these people.
02:20A lot of them are going to go back to being independents who may lean one way or lean
02:24another.
02:27I think that ultimately the kind of people who supported the TPP, I think ultimately
02:32are looking for a third party.
02:35And if a viable new third party were to appear, I think that they might go toward that.
02:40But I think that really there is a hunger out there among a certain percentage of the
02:44voting public for something that is not the DPP and something that is not the KMT.