We Care Kaohsiung, which last year organized a rally drawing 80,000 people, announced on Tuesday evening that it is preparing to launch a petition to recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜).
Over the past few months, Han has shown himself to be “uninterested and incompetent in running the city,” the group wrote on Facebook.
“Can we accept having someone like him be the mayor of Kaohsiung? The answer should be a resounding ‘no,’” the group added.
Photo copied by Huang Chia-lin, Taipei Times
We Care Kaohsiung was last year formed by Kaohsiung residents and civil groups to promote a Nov. 17 rally in the city to oppose smear campaigns and bullying related to the Nov. 24 local elections.
Some people hope to decide whether to recall Han after the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary, but the mayor should be recalled regardless of the primary results, the group said.
“To recall Han, we must not wait and need not wait,” it said.
Initiating a recall election is a lengthy process and would require the support of at least 600,000 people, the group said.
To ensure that Han is recalled, the group has held multiple discussions, and consulted many experts and veterans of recall and referendum campaigns, it said.
The recall campaign would be carefully planned, the group said, urging people to support its cause.
To launch an election to recall a mayor, 1 percent of the electorate in Kaohsiung, or 22,814 residents, must sign a first-phase recall petition, according to the Civil Servants Election And Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
Following that, 10 percent of the local electorate, or 228,134 residents, must sign a second-phase petition in 60 days.
To recall the mayor, 25 percent of Kaohsiung’s electorate must vote in favor of recalling him, with the number of “yes” votes exceeding the “no” votes.
Considering that Han was elected mayor with nearly 890,000 votes, We Care Kaohsiung estimated that at least 600,000 “yes” votes would be needed in the recall election.
‘LONE WOLF’: The suspect was difficult to locate, as he did not use a cellphone, did not contact family and often lived in abandoned sites or parks, police said Taipei police on Thursday morning arrested a man accused of numerous burglaries and at least 14 incidents of sexual assault spanning more than 20 years, in what might be the nation’s most notorious crime spree in recent years. Sixty-year-old Tu Ming-lang (涂明朗) — who was yesterday placed in judicial detention, after a judge determined he was a flight risk without a fixed address — faces multiple charges of sexual assault and burglary, police said. A task force comprised of various law enforcement agencies arrested Tu as part of an investigation into an April 28 burglary in Daan District (大安), in which a
Ninth graders were asked to define “trolling” on this year’s standardized exam, reflecting efforts to make the test better reflect real-life situations. Adjustments to this year’s Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School Students were revealed on Sunday, after the last cohort of students completed the test over the weekend. The Ministry of Education solicited feedback about the test from teachers, who approved of the new question in the English portion. Not only was question No. 20 “very much in line with real-life situations,” but it also used a new style in which students were asked to ascertain the correct dictionary definition based
Taiwan is on alert for monkeypox, a rare viral disease that has caused 87 infections in 11 countries over the past three weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Saturday. The WHO on Friday convened an emergency session to discuss a sudden outbreak of monkeypox in North America and Europe. Since the beginning of this month, 87 confirmed cases and 28 possible cases have been identified in 11 countries. The countries with the highest case counts are England with 29 cases, and Portugal and Spain with 23 each. Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease occurring primarily in the tropical rainforest areas
Three human skeletons and artifacts believed to be about 400 years old were unearthed by construction workers at National Ilan University in Yilan County, the university said yesterday. The discoveries were made on May 10 as workers were digging to expand the College of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science’s facilities, the university said in a statement. The skeletons were found at three sites, along with glass beads, copper bells and rings, discs and a fish-shaped metal knot, it said. The find is likely connected to the “Old Baili Village” (擺厘舊社, Bai Li Jiu She), an as-yet-undiscovered Kavalan settlement that has been mentioned in