The nine-in-one elections tomorrow are set to be not only the biggest poll in the nation’s history in terms of the number of local government posts up for grabs, but also a chance for voters to exercise another constitutional right of equal importance — the right to recall.
The Appendectomy Project, an offshoot of the Sunflower movement in March and April, is preparing to set up stands near 586 polling stations in three constituencies in Taipei and New Taipei City to collect signatures for petitions to recall Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Alex Tsai (蔡正元), Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) and Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池).
There has not been a case in Taiwan of a lawmaker being removed from office through recall and only once has a recall election been held — in July 1994, when the KMT forced through a budget for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), which triggered people to initiate a signature drive that placed five KMT lawmakers on recall ballots.
The 1994 recall campaigns were given a boost by a hunger strike by former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), but were resisted at every turn by the KMT, which then rammed an amendment to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) through the legislature.
The then-Taipei County Government, which was run by the DPP, initially decided to hold the recall vote on the same day as elections for Taiwan provincial governor and Taipei mayor in December 1994, but it was forced to decouple the votes as a result of the KMT’s amendment, which prohibits a recall vote being held with an election. The amendment also elevated signature requirements that recall petitions must meet to qualify, and increased the turnout and voting thresholds for a recall to succeed.
The Taipei County recall vote on the four KMT lawmakers failed due to insufficient turnout, as did a recall vote against another KMT lawmaker in Taipei, held separately from the Taipei mayoral election.
Twenty years later, a public initiative to exercise the right to recall, enshrined in Article 17 of the Constitution, met with stronger opposition from the KMT administration. The Central Election Commission (CEC) came up with a new official template for signature sheets and demanded that all signatures on the same sheet of paper be from the same neighborhood — a change from its previous template, which had each signature on its own sheet of paper.
By changing the template, the commission was being obstructive.
The new template, which can have seven signatures on the same sheet, could make people hesitant to sign it, because their personal information — including ID number, date of birth and address — would be visible to other people signing the same form.
The template might also have been designed to take advantage of signature collectors who are not aware that each page must be signed by people from the same neighborhood. The commission could then invalidate signatures collected from neighborhoods different from that of the first person listed on the form.
Through months of effort to collect signatures on streets, in communities, markets and other crowded places — without the DPP’s support as in 1994 — the campaign to recall Tsai, Wu and Lin entered the second stage. This phase requires the collection of at least 13 percent of signatures from the electorate in each of the lawmakers’ three constituencies in 30 days for the recall motion to be considered by the CEC.
Taipei and New Taipei City election commissions accepted a request by the Appendectomy Project yesterday to use the original form of the CEC’s template. However, the CEC rejected the decision.
More public awareness will be required to address the recall system, otherwise the right to recall will remain in name only.
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
RSS