Fifty-two-point-one percent of Kaohsiung residents polled said they would vote to remove Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) from office in a recall election, a survey released yesterday by the New Power Party (NPP) showed.
The survey found that 35.2 percent would vote against recalling Han, 9 percent were undecided and 3.7 percent declined to answer.
The Central Election Commission on April 17 announced that a recall vote of Han would be held on June 6 after 377,662 valid petition signatures were submitted to initiate it.
Photo: CNA
At least 25 percent of eligible voters in Kaohsiung would need to vote in favor of a recall, and the ballots cast in support of the motion must exceed the number cast against it for the motion to pass, Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) regulations say.
The commission said that 2,281,338 people were eligible to vote in 2018’s Kaohsiung mayoral election.
The NPP survey showed that 43.6 percent of respondents said they would “definitely” vote in the recall vote, 22 percent said “probably,” 13.6 percent said “probably not” and 13.1 percent said “definitely not.”
Among the respondents, 24.4 percent said they were “not very satisfied” with Han’s overall performance since taking office, while 36.1 percent said they were “very dissatisfied.”
Thirteen percent said they were “very satisfied” with his performance, 18.6 percent said they were “fairly satisfied” and 7.9 percent expressed “no clear opinion,” the survey showed.
The poll was conducted by Trend Survey and Research Co via telephone from April 18 to Monday last week and received 805 valid responses from people in Kaohsiung aged 20 or over.
It had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
People must be 20 or older to vote in a recall vote.
In a separate poll conducted on April 17 and 18, the NPP found that 46.9 percent of respondents chose New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) when asked whose performance among the mayors of the six special municipalities they were “most satisfied” with in preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) garnered 12.4 percent of the support, while Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲, 11.4 percent), Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲, 5.4 percent), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕, 4.4 percent) and Han (4.1 percent) were the others.
Fourteen percent said they had “no clear opinion,” while 1.4 percent were dissatisfied with the performance of all six, the second survey found.
The mayors survey, which was also carried out by Trend Survey and Research, collected 813 valid responses from people aged 20 or over and had a margin of error of 3.44 percentage points.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
RSS