EDITORIAL: What are Han Kuo-yu’s ‘dark forces’?

It was shocking to hear Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) say that the legislative branch is somehow now under the control of “dark forces.”

Frustrated at the glacial pace of the passage of the government’s annual budget for this year — it was finally passed at 6:08pm on Friday after a record delay of 266 days — Han had lost his temper during a cross-caucus negotiation meeting on Tuesday. The target of his ire was Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁), who was absent that day.

Fu had failed to attend the cross-caucus negotiations on a total of five occasions since July 30, including Tuesday. He has excused his behavior by saying that it had been a silent protest at the way the Executive Yuan had “disrespected” the legislature.

Others have said that Fu was disrespecting Han. There are apparently tensions between the two men that stem from Han’s reluctance to have Fu as the deputy legislative speaker.

Han’s outburst, and the “dark forces” comment, could well have been a result of the pressure of having to pass the much-delayed budget, Fu’s absence being the last straw, tinged with the tensions between them. That does not absolve him of his inability to bring the respective caucuses together to pass the budget in a more timely fashion; it is his job to do so. Nor does it absolve Fu of his immature dereliction of responsibility; neither does it answer the question of whom Han meant when he used that ominous term.

Han did not elaborate at the time, neither was it obvious within the context in which the remark was made, and he has not clarified what he meant by the outburst in the days since. This has left it open to interpretation, and interpreted it has been, unreliably yet predictably so, through the filter of differing political agendas.

In a Facebook post, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) pointed to the increasingly pro-China, Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-adjacent rhetoric of KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and the large delegation of KMT legislators that Fu had led to Beijing in 2024 — shortly after he took the reins as KMT legislative caucus whip — where the group met Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧) and China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao (宋濤).

The post also pointed to the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), whose former legislator-at-large Xu Chunying (徐春鶯), a Chinese immigrant, was sentenced on Tuesday for contravening the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法), among other crimes.

The post did not explicitly say that Han’s “dark forces” comment was a reference to the CCP’s infiltration of the legislature and influence over KMT and TPP figures, but it strongly insinuated that it was, leaving readers to come to their own conclusions. This insinuation would certainly cohere with concerns that many Taiwanese have.

At the speaker’s podium in the legislative chamber on Friday evening, after striking his gavel to signify the passage of the long-delayed budget, Han shook his head in a show of exhaustion and delivered closing remarks to the legislators present.

He called on the opposition to demonstrate more maturity in providing legislative oversight, and on the central government, and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) in particular, not to jeopardize the rule of law or the smooth operation of a constitutional government by refusing to countersign or implement laws that the legislature had passed after three readings.

Han also called on the opposition and governing parties to be more open to compromise in negotiations.

The KMT and the TPP have jumped on his criticisms of Cho and the Executive Yuan, saying that these were the targets of Han’s “dark forces” comment.

The attribution of blame is pure politics. For the DPP, it was an easy conversion. For the KMT and the TPP, it was more problematic, and doubtless required careful coordination regarding messaging, to distract from the obvious connection of “dark forces” to CCP influence and infiltration.

Surely, Han would have known, in the current political environment, how saying that “the legislature had come under the control of dark forces” would be open to interpretation from the political rivals of the KMT, to which he belongs. This makes it doubly surprising that he has not since clarified to the public what he meant by the term.