The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has vowed to recall President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, but it is still contemplating the best way to do it.
The DPP declared an all-out war with the KMT on Sunday when Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told about 100,000 protesters in Taipei that the party would launch a bid to recall Ma and the KMT lawmakers.
Unlike recalling the president, which given its high threshold would be more difficult, albeit less debatable, recalling lawmakers is more likely to succeed, but has raised discussions about strategies within the DPP.
Speaking yesterday on the sidelines of the party’s weekly Central Standing Committee meeting in Wurih District (烏日), Greater Taichung, former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said there would be two options for the bid to recall KMT lawmakers.
“We could try to recall all the KMT lawmakers or some of them,” Hsieh said.
Tying to recall all the entire caucus would likely cause a counterattack from the pan-blue camp, which could also attempt to recall DPP lawmakers, he said.
“If that happened, that could be a good thing because it would create a de facto, brand new legislative election,” Hsieh said.
Hsieh declined to make a recommendation, saying that the decision should be made by the chairman.
Former premier Yu Shyi-kun said the DPP has to focus its energy and resources on specific constituencies to bring down the KMT lawmakers who spoke or acted against reform.
“Recalling a legislator will not be an easy task because the lawmaker could reward voters with benefits, including cash or prizes, by asking them not to vote,” Yu said, adding that he was not too worried about a pan-blue counterattack.
As for Ma, Yu said the DPP should still make an effort to recall him, even though the attempt will certainly fail.
Su has not publicly explained how the DPP plans to recall either KMT lawmakers or Ma.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching