The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said it was optimistic about the possibility of recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators because of the success the DPP candidate had in a legislator by-election in Greater Taichung.
Non-Partisan Solidarity Union member Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), a former legislator who represented the second electoral district in Greater Taichung, lost his seat after being convicted of corruption in November last year and sentenced to three-and-half years in prison.
Yen Kuang-hen (顏寬恆), Yen Ching-piao’s son, stepped in to fill his fathers shoes in the by-election on Saturday, going up against DPP candidate Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) and winning by less than 1,200 votes.
Photo: CNA
DPP Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said that Chen Shih-kai’s being able to close the gap between the DPP and the KMT to bring get nearly 50 percent of the votes after just 40 days of campaigning, compared with the 40 percent attained in the past, reflected the public’s dissatisfaction with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration.
Chen Chi-mai also said that with support for the KMT-led government being so low, DPP efforts to impeach KMT legislators may be successful.
DPP Legislator Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) also said that Chen Shih-kai’s performance in the election seems to indicate that if the DPP attempted to impeach legislators in constituencies where the it has a larger voter base, it had a good chance of gaining those constituencies.
Regardless of how future by-elections turn out, it would impose on Ma a severe critique of his administration’s policies, Lee said.
Chen Chi-mai also offered his views on how the DPP should proceed, saying that the party should target legislators who are firmly entrenched in the Ma camp and KMT party caucus, or legislators with a reputation for disreputable conduct, and pick the DPP candidates that were within an 8 percent margin of victory in the legislative elections in Jan. 14 last year to stand in by-elections.
Chen Chi-mai said former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and former DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) should promote the impeachment of KMT legislators in Taipei and be by-election candidates if the impeachment succeeds.
The plan would assign the same tasks to former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) in New Taipei City (新北市), former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) in Taoyuan County, former Council of Agriculture chairman Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) in central Taiwan and former Presidential Office secretary-general Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) in southern Taiwan
Chen Chi-mai said potential targets for Su and Tsai were former KMT party whip Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) and KMT caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池), while Yu should target the newly appointed KMT whip Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆).
Chen Chi-mai also said that in areas where the DPP had lost, but in which it had a broader voter base, the party should nominate the same candidates as last year because this would help voters become more hopeful for changes in the political sphere.
Additional reporting by Lin Shu-hui
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods