Ko Wen-je's 10-year rise and fall in Taiwanese politics

Taipei, Dec. 26 (CNA) Ko Wen-je's (柯文哲) indictment on corruption charges Thursday capped a decade-long rise and dramatic fall for a politician who founded the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) and ran for president after bursting onto the scene as Taipei's mayor in 2014.

Born in Hsinchu in 1960, Ko graduated from National Taiwan University's (NTU) Department of Medicine and by age 35 had become an attending physician and director of the surgical ICU at NTU Hospital.

During his tenure, Ko set up an organ transplant team at the hospital and introduced the use of ECMO machines, a form of extracorporeal life support frequently used during transplant surgeries.

In 2011, however, his life took a turn when he was found responsible and formally reprimanded after HIV-infected organs were mistakenly transplanted into five patients at the hospital.

Politics

Following the incident, Ko quit medicine and threw his hat into the ring for the 2014 Taipei mayor's race, running as an independent with the support of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

During the campaign, Ko's irreverent style and positioning outside Taiwan's traditional blue (KMT) and green (DPP) political camps caught on with voters, propelling him to election victory with 57 percent of the vote.

In a three-way race four years later, he edged out the KMT's Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) by less than 3,000 votes to win reelection.

In his second term, Ko launched the Taiwan People's Party in 2019, which went on to win five legislative seats in 2020 elections. After leaving office as mayor in 2022, he set his sights on the 2024 presidential race.

During the presidential campaign, months of talks over a possible joint ticket between the KMT and TPP collapsed, spectacularly, in front of a televised negotiation session weeks before the election.

Ko nevertheless exceeded expectations running on his own, winning 26.46 percent of the vote compared to 40.05 percent for the DPP's Lai Ching-te (賴清德) and 33.49 percent by the KMT's Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜).

Perhaps more important, however, were the eight seats the TPP won in the Legislature, which gave the party a deciding role on legislation as neither the DPP nor the KMT had achieved a majority.

Ko's legal trouble and the TPP's future

Only months after the election, however, the Taipei City government announced it was investigating possible corruption relating to a redevelopment project that took place during Ko's second term.

In August, Ko and the TPP faced new allegations of embezzling and otherwise misusing political donations to the party.

Faced with mounting scrutiny, Ko announced on Aug. 29 that he would take a three-month leave of absence as TPP chairman. The following day, his residence and TPP offices were searched by prosecutors, and on Sept. 5, he was ordered held in pre-charge detention.

The charges against Ko on Thursday -- for which prosecutors have requested a 28.5-year prison sentence -- came exactly 10 years and one day after the then-political outsider took office as Taipei mayor on Dec. 25, 2014.

Aside from Ko's own legal jeopardy, it remains to be seen what impact the case will have on the TPP, which in the last five years has established itself as a rare third force in Taiwan's two-party-dominated political system.

In a statement issued Thursday, Lin Fu-nan (林富男), head of a TPP emergency response team, said the party "did not accept" Ko's written resignation as chairman, and would "100 percent" wait for him to return and lead the party.

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Dec. 20: Court agrees to let gagged Ko send resignation letter to TPP

Timeline/Core Pacific City corruption case involving ex-Taipei mayor (up to Dec. 26)