Organizers of a campaign to recall independent Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷) yesterday held a parade to drum up support ahead of the vote next month.
Campaign spokesperson Hsu Shang-hsien (徐尚賢) urged Fongshan District (鳳山) residents to vote to recall Huang on Feb. 6, to “teach the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) a lesson.”
Wecare Kaohsiung founder Aaron Yin (尹立), who in June last year initiated an effort to recall then-Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), said the campaign to recall Huang was an effort to seek revenge for Han’s removal.
Photo: Hsu Li-chuen, Taipei Times
Yin said the Huang recall movement was emotionally based and lacked a logical and factual basis.
He said that he hoped these kinds of recall efforts would end in Kaohsiung.
Huang said that she respected the organizers’ rights to start a recall, adding that she hoped the movement would make a rational appeal to voters instead of simply sowing bipartisan conflict.
Huang, previously with the New Power Party, said she was grateful to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who in her capacity as DPP chairperson called for party members to support Huang in the recall vote.
In other news, Taoyuan City Councilor Wang Hao-yu (王浩宇) of the DPP, who was recalled on Saturday last week by Jhongli District (中壢) voters, was officially removed from office on Friday, the Central Election Commission said.
Under the law, Wang would be unable to run for the same post over the next four years.
As Wang had less than two years remaining in his term, and as the number of vacant seats on the council was less than 50 percent of the total, the commission would not hold a by-election to fill his post, it said, citing the Local Government Act (地方制度法).
The agency made the announcement after it verified the vote tally from the recall, when 28 percent of eligible voters turned out.
The results showed 84,582 votes (92.23 percent) in favor of the recall motion and 7,128 (7.7 percent) against, the commission said.
The total number of ballots cast in favor of the recall was more than the 16,292 votes Wang received when he was elected in 2018.
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