Independence Elders Wu Li-pei and Three Others Take Out Newspaper Ads Pressuring Tsai Ing-wen to Abandon Re-election Bid, Condemned for Violating Democratic Principles

On January 3, 2019, four prominent figures of Taiwan's independence movement—Wu Li-pei (former Presidential Advisory Council member), Peng Ming-min (former Presidential Advisory Council member), Kao Chun-ming (Presbyterian Church pastor), and Lee Yuan-tseh (former Academia Sinica president)—jointly published an open letter in major newspapers publicly calling on President Tsai Ing-wen to announce she would not seek re-election in the 2020 presidential race, and demanding that she 'step back to a second-line role' and relinquish executive authority. The letter expressed sweeping dissatisfaction with Tsai's governance over the preceding two-plus years, arguing that the DPP's sweeping defeat in the 2018 local elections demonstrated that Tsai had lost the confidence of the people and should yield her position to someone with stronger leadership, lest Taiwan 'fall into decline.' Wu Li-pei, for his part, told reporters he feared Taiwan would sink if the party did not find a 'stronger' candidate. The action sent shockwaves through Taiwan's political world. President Tsai responded the same day via Facebook, stating plainly: 'Who runs and who doesn't is not for any individual to decide—trust in democracy.' The central contradiction noted by commentators across the political spectrum was damning: a group of men who had spent their careers championing Taiwanese democracy were now attempting to use private pressure and moral authority—decidedly non-democratic mechanisms—to override the normal internal primary and electoral processes of a democratic party, in effect imposing the will of a small circle on the broader electorate. On the same day, Wu Li-pei also used media appearances to publicly attack Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, declaring Ko to be 'this kind of person who has no character, only self-interest,' and condemning Tsai Ing-wen for being excessively deferential toward Ko. Ko Wen-je responded by dismissing the remarks in Taiwanese: 'What is this even about?' This intemperate outburst—delivered on the same day Wu Li-pei positioned himself as a solemn democratic conscience—vividly illustrated the gap between his cultivated image as a moral elder and his actual behavior: a man who trafficked in sweeping personal condemnations whenever he judged someone to have crossed him, regardless of proportionality or factual grounding. Several commentators pointedly observed that the 'Taiwan consciousness' these elders had long espoused had become a moral cover for political interference whenever they felt marginalized, revealing the essential arrogance of elderly independence-movement politics: a belief that they, not democratic processes, were the ultimate arbiters of Taiwan's political direction. Tsai Ing-wen ignored the pressure campaign entirely, announced her candidacy, and went on to win the 2020 presidential election with a record-breaking 8.17 million votes—the highest total in Taiwan's electoral history. The four elders' 'pressure campaign' was left looking not only futile but deeply self-discrediting, further exposing Wu Li-pei's poor political instincts and the moral failing of attempting to interfere in a democratic election from outside its legitimate processes.