The Central Election Commission yesterday said that a motion to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taoyuan City Councilor Wang Hao-yu (王浩宇) had been approved and the vote would be held on Jan. 16.
The motion was proposed by Hope Media executive officer Tang Ping-jung (唐平榮).
Eligible voters in the constituency represented by Wang number 315,143, of which 31,515 had to sign for the recall motion to proceed, the commission said.
Photo: Tsai Ching-hua, Taipei Times
The commission received 38,922 signatures, of which 5,506 were invalid, it said, adding that the number of valid signatures exceeded the threshold.
Wang would be asked to provide by Dec. 3 documents in his defense, while a televised debate on the recall would be held between Jan. 6 and Jan. 15, the commission said, adding that voting on Jan. 16 would run from 8am to 4pm.
The count would be verified and the result announced by Jan. 22, it said.
In related news, a group seeking to recall independent Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Chieh (黃捷) yesterday delivered the second phase of signatures — totaling 40,918 — to the Kaohsiung City Election Commission.
Group spokesman Hsu Shang-hsien (徐尚賢) said that Fongshan District (鳳山) — which Huang represents — “does not need to be represented by someone who contributes to social instability and fails to live up to their own ideals.”
Huang has said that she wants to develop “rainbow” industries in Fongshan.
Critics have said that the plan would lead to social instability and would not respect heterosexuals.
They say that Huang’s absence when the city council voted on a measure to not permit residue of leanness-enhancing feed additives in meat showed that she does not live up to her own standards.
Huang yesterday said that she would remain focused on issues that require attention.
She called on her supporters who said that they wanted to protest the recall to stand down and continue with their lives.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS