On Sunday, voters in Taipei’s fifth electoral district and Taichung’s second electoral district will be going to the polls.
The former will be voting on a recall motion for independent Legislator Freddie Lim (林昶佐); the latter in a by-election to fill the vacancy left by former Taiwan Statebuilding Party legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟), who was ousted in the same recall drive — part of a political strategy being pursued by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — that threatens Lim.
Searching for a legitimate reason for Lim’s recall is futile. He has been a hard-working lawmaker who, among other things, sits on the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, as did Chen before his recall.
Neither has Lim been involved in any scandal or been accused of any wrongdoing that would warrant a recall. If he had, the KMT would have used these to its full advantage.
It had been clear from the recall drive against independent Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷), which Fongshan District (鳳山) constituents rejected on Feb. 7 last year, that the KMT is not interested in holding wayward elected officials to account, but is more interested in manipulating recalls for its own political interest.
Some commentators, looking either for an internal logic to the KMT’s targeting of Chen and Lim or a point of attack against the recalls, suggested that the motivation behind the strategy was to remove them from the legislative committee, and thereby even up the proportion of pan-blue and pan-green committee members.
Even with Chen and Lim gone, leaving only Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT members on the committee, the DPP would still have a majority of 6:5, and the allotment would change in the next legislative session anyway, again in the DPP’s favor.
For the KMT to have gone through all this trouble over such an extended period for a tiny window with even a parity on the committee would not have been worthwhile.
Another motivation behind the KMT’s strategy is the weakening of the “oppose the Chinese Communist Party [CCP], safeguard Taiwan” proponents in the legislature.
Chen was easier pickings, because he lacked the support of a major party and contended with the combined forces of the KMT, the CCP and the influential Yen (顏) family in Taichung — one of whom, Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒), is contesting Sunday’s by-election. Lim is independent, and so the DPP can, and has, stepped in to offer its support and resources.
Weakening the “oppose the CCP, safeguard Taiwan” element does not account for the attempt to oust Huang: Her situation was genuinely a retributive recall because of her perceived role in the downfall of former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜).
However, the KMT’s subsequent retributive recall strategy grew out of the attempt on Huang’s position as the party realized it could exploit the mechanism.
One thing that does unite Huang, Chen and Lim, as well as former DPP Taoyuan City councilor Wang Hao-yu (王浩宇), who was recalled in January last year, is their youth, and their appeal to the younger electorate. It is to the KMT’s advantage that it hobbles the appeal to young people of the pan-green camp, since it seems unwilling to expend the effort to court the younger vote itself.
The recall mechanism is designed to give power back to local constituents, but it has been hijacked for parties’ national political strategies.
Now it has been revealed as an effective instrument, it is reasonable to believe that any major political party in opposition would seek to leverage it.
It is time to amend the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) to establish more robust criteria to ensure the reasons for initiating a recall proposal are legitimate.
What value does the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hold in Taiwan? One might say that it is to defend — or at the very least, maintain — truly “blue” qualities. To be truly “blue” — without impurities, rejecting any “red” influence — is to uphold the ideology consistent with that on which the Republic of China (ROC) was established. The KMT would likely not object to this notion. However, if the current generation of KMT political elites do not understand what it means to be “blue” — or even light blue — their knowledge and bravery are far too lacking
Taipei’s population is estimated to drop below 2.5 million by the end of this month — the only city among the nation’s six special municipalities that has more people moving out than moving in this year. A city that is classified as a special municipality can have three deputy mayors if it has a population of more than 2.5 million people, Article 55 of the Local Government Act (地方制度法) states. To counter the capital’s shrinking population, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) held a cross-departmental population policy committee meeting on Wednesday last week to discuss possible solutions. According to Taipei City Government data, Taipei’s
A 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy was stabbed to death last week in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Although Beijing called it “an isolated incident that could happen in any country,” the tragedy is widely viewed as a cautionary tale of the consequences of the rise of ultranationalism and xenophobia in China, which has worsened as its economy deteriorates. The suspect is a 44-year-old unemployed Chinese man. The stabbing occurred on Sept. 18 — the sensitive anniversary of the “918” incident of 1931, which is commemorated in China as the start of the Japanese invasion of northeast Manchuria. Chinese officials and state media
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been pushing nationalist rhetoric and xenophobic education, and now this has led to tragedy. On Wednesday last week — the 93rd anniversary of the Mukden Incident, when Japan launched its invasion of Manchuria — a 10-year-old Japanese boy living in Shenzhen was stabbed to death on his way to school. This is the second time this year a Japanese citizen has been attacked in public in China. In addition to the attacks on Japanese residing in China, five US college teachers were injured in a knife attack in June. These attacks show a surge of