A petition to recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) is expected to clear an initial threshold for getting the proposal on a ballot as the number of signatures collected nears 30,000, organizers said yesterday.
If the petition succeeds, it would be the first time a mayor is recalled in Taiwan, said the group Citizen Mowing Action, which organized the petition with We Care Kaohsiung and other groups.
“Recalling Han is difficult, but it is the right thing to do,” said a Citizen Mowing Action spokesman surnamed Lee (李).
Photo: CNA
The campaign is not funded by any political parties or corporations, so group members have to pay for expenses out of their own pockets, Lee said.
Citizen Mowing Action and We Care Kaohsiung on Thursday last week began distributing and collecting petition forms to recall Han, who is contesting the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary.
The purpose of the petition is to punish Han for giving little thought and effort to running Kaohsiung and to stop opportunists from blurring the nation’s sovereignty and manipulating cross-strait relations, We Care Kaohsiung said on Facebook on Saturday.
In addition to sending signed petition forms to the groups, people can also mail them to the offices of the Taiwan Radical Wings or the Democratic Progressive Party’s Kaohsiung city councilors, the organizers said.
Taiwan Radical Wings spokesman Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) said that it would organize a march in Kaohsiung to urge people to recall Han on July 14, after the KMT has conducted a poll to determine its candidate for next year’s presidential election.
“If you love Kaohsiung, you should love it your entire life. You cannot look down on the city, then pursue it, but finally abandon it,” he said.
The march is inevitable, as Han has broken his promise to be mayor, he said.
Asked why Taiwan Radical Wings chose to hold the march on the day before the KMT unveils the result of its primary poll, Chen said that the party cares more about the interests of the public than its own development.
Recalling Han is expected to be a lengthy battle and the key challenge is passing a second-stage threshold for initiating a recall election, he said.
When asked about the petition yesterday, Han told reporters in Kaohsiung that the city government must be responsible and quickly complete its tasks.
“As for other issues, such as political manipulations and people’s political opinions, it is a democratic society and I respect them,” he said.
Under the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), to launch an election to recall the mayor, 1 percent of the electorate, or 22,814 residents in Kaohsiung, must sign a first-phase recall petition; and 10 percent of the local electorate, or 228,134 residents, must sign a second-phase petition.
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.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS