The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) over the weekend launched a signature drive to recall President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), citing the nation’s deteriorating fiscal condition and struggling economy.
Taiwan Solidarity Union caucus whip Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) said the party aimed to collect more than 1 million signatures by May and then formally present the petition after Ma finishes the first year of his four-year second term on May 20.
The Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) stipulates that a president or vice president who has not yet served for one year may not be recalled.
Petition stations will be set up across the nation to collect signatures, TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said, adding that after it has collected the signatures, the party would ask all district legislators whether they would obey “the people’s will [as shown through the signature drive] or Ma’s opinions?”
By doing this the party aims to sift out elected representatives who ignore the voice of the public and shield an incompetent government, Huang Kun-huei said. He added that the party would simultaneously gather all lawmakers’ performance records in the legislature and find out who had been siding with the government’s poor policies.
If needed, a survey could also be conducted to cross-reference the public’s opinion of lawmakers’ performances, he said.
The party would then move to launch a recall of poorly performing lawmakers as a precursor to recalling Ma, Huang Kun-huei said.
He said the balance of power in the legislature, where the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) currently holds a majority, would be changed if three to five KMT lawmakers lost their seats.
“With an approval rate of only 13 percent, Ma still fails to engage in introspection and review his ill-conceived policies,” Huang Kun-huei said. “Can Taiwan afford to have him sit in office for another four years, all the while seeing the nation making no progress?”
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS