Campaign groups have submitted petitions to recall 19 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and a suspended Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) mayor, the Central Election Commission (CEC) confirmed yesterday.
Nineteen civil groups delivered boxes full of petitions to the commission’s headquarters in Taipei yesterday morning, where United Microelectronics Corp founder Robert Tsao (曹興誠) addressed the gathering.
Grassroots recall efforts are the true expression of the public’s will, to show that the people are the masters of the nation, Tsao said as spokesman for the Safeguard Taiwan, Anti-Communist Volunteers Alliance.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The 19 lawmakers potentially facing recall votes include KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) and Legislator Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇).
The other KMT legislators are Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀), Yeh Yuan-chih (葉元之), Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭), Tu Chuan-chi (涂權吉), Lu Ming-che (魯明哲), Wan Mei-ling (萬美玲), Lu Yu-ling (呂玉玲), Chiu Jo-hua (邱若華), Cheng Cheng-chien (鄭正鈐), Yu Hao (游顥), Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒), Liao Wei-hsiang (廖偉翔), Huang Chien-hao (黃健豪), Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋), Ting Hsueh-chung (丁學忠), Huang Chien-pin (黃建賓) and Ma Wen-chun (馬文君).
Suspended Hsinchu mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the TPP is also facing a recall vote, after she was suspended following a conviction for corruption in July last year.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The CEC said it would conduct an initial review of the recall petitions and, if approved, forward them to local election committees for review.
“These are citizen groups acting independently, working at the grassroots level and going beyond partisan politics,” Tsao said.
“China believes it can control Taiwan’s legislature by using money to buy off unscrupulous legislators, that it can subvert the country from within,” he said.
He said that KMT and TPP legislators feel emboldened to push through numerous bills in an “arrogant and autocratic manner.”
“However, they forgot that the main components of Taiwan’s political system are the citizens who vote in elections, not political parties,” Tsao said, calling the recall movement a “holy war” to clear out Chinese collaborators.
At a news conference at the legislature, Fu said that the KMT respects people expressing their opinions, “but we hope the ruling party would not stir up trouble.”
Fu urged people to remember President William Lai’s (賴清德) Lunar New Year message wishing that “every family can enjoy peace, togetherness and happiness,” and for “the ruling and opposition parties to have harmony and unity” in the coming year.
Separately, KMT youth wing members told reporters that their recall efforts against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus secretary-general Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and DPP Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) have reached the first-stage threshold, at 1 percent of all eligible voters in their electoral districts.
They vowed to submit the signatures and documentation to the CEC later this week.
At a DPP news conference, caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said that the current legislative session would be a “recall vote session” because “both sides have launched large-scale recall votes.”
“The large-scale recall vote initiative was started by the KMT,” Ker said, without elaborating. “The DPP is just responding.”
The recall votes would be completed by Sept. 1 at the latest, he said, adding that “the KMT would undoubtedly be defeated.”
Global bodies should stop excluding Taiwan for political reasons, President William Lai (賴清德) told Pope Francis in a letter, adding that he agrees war has no winners. The Vatican is one of only 12 countries to retain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and Taipei has watched with concern efforts by Beijing and the Holy See to improve ties. In October, the Vatican and China extended an accord on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China for four years, pointing to a new level of trust between the two parties. Lai, writing to the pope in response to the pontiff’s message on Jan. 1’s
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
HOLIDAY EXERCISE: National forest recreation areas from north to south offer travelers a wide choice of sights to connect with nature and enjoy its benefits Hiking is a good way to improve one’s health, the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency said, as it released a list of national forest recreation areas that travelers can visit during the Lunar New Year holiday. Taking a green shower of phytoncides in the woods could boost one’s immunity system and metabolism, agency Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) cited a Japanese study as saying. For people visiting northern Taiwan, Lin recommended the Dongyanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Taoyuan’s Fusing District (復興). Once an important plantation in the north, Dongyanshan (東眼山) has a number of historic monuments, he said. The area is broadly covered by
Tainan’s initiative to recruit digital nomads has resulted in several German, US and Vietnamese nationals applying to live and work in the city, the Tainan Research, Development and Evaluation Commission said yesterday. That marked the city as the first in the nation to attract digital nomads, following the launch of the program last month, it said. Although all applicants so far have used work visas or tourism visas instead of the special digital nomad permit from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the city government believes that the latter would be needed eventually, the commission said. The digital nomads recruited by Tainan would work
RSS