TAIPEI, Taiwan: Terry Gou, billionaire founder of Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple Inc., said on Monday it is entering the race to become Taiwan’s next president as an independent candidate in the 2024 election.
Gou stepped down as head of Foxconn in 2019 and ran for president that year, but dropped out after failing to win the nomination of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang KMT, which has traditionally favoured close ties with China.
He made a second bid to become the KMT’s candidate for the presidential election to be held in January this year, but the party instead chose Hou Yu-ih, the mayor of New Taipei City.
Gou has spent the past few weeks touring Taiwan and holding campaign-like rallies, fueling speculation that he planned to run as an independent.
“Under the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party, for the past seven years or so, internationally, they have been leading Taiwan to the danger of war. Domestically, their policies are full of mistakes,” Gou said, adding that the “era of entrepreneurial government” had begun.
“Give me four years and I promise to bring 50 years of peace to the Taiwan Strait and build the deepest foundation of cross-strait mutual trust,” he said in a plea to Taiwanese voters.
“Taiwan must not become Ukraine, and I will not allow Taiwan to become the next Ukraine.”
Gou needs to collect nearly 300,000 voter signatures by November 2 to qualify as an independent candidate under election regulations. The Central Electoral Commission will check the signatures and announce the results by November 14.
The presidential candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) William Lai who at present is Taiwan’s Vice President is considered favourite to win the election as he leads the polls with the majority public backing him.
Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je, of the small Taiwan People’s Party, is generally favored to run second in the polls, with Hou as low as third.
Gou’s main theme in his pseudo-campaign was that the only way to avoid war with China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, was to remove the DPP from office.
China has a particular dislike for Lai because of his remarks about being a “worker” for Taiwan independence, a red line for Beijing.
The DPP promotes Taiwan’s separate identity from China, but the government it leads has repeatedly offered to negotiate with China, which has been rejected.
The run-up to the election comes at a time of heightened tensions between Taipei and Beijing as China holds regular military exercises near the island to assert its sovereignty claims.
