A civic alliance that launched a recall campaign against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) accused the Central Election Commission (CEC) on Thursday of seeking revenge on behalf of political figures by sending its New Taipei City (新北市) branch to investigate whether the signature drive launched in August last year was in any way illegal.
Academia Sinica research fellow and Constitution 133 Alliance (憲法一三三實踐聯盟) member Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) made the accusation in a Facebook post, calling the commission’s action “phony” and “shameful.”
The recall movement against Wu was launched in August last year over what the alliance said was Wu’s failure to serve the public interest and its belief that he acted as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “yes-man.”
The campaign to recall Wu fell through after it was not able to secure enough signatures to fulfill the second stage of a recall motion by a Feb. 1 deadline.
Huang said that when CEC Chairperson Chang Po-ya (張博雅) gave her report to the Legislative Yuan last year, she told Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) that the commission was aware Article 86 of the Civil Servants’ Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉與罷免法) was not suited to the 21st century and that it was in the process of debating its revision.
Article 86 states that when a recall act is in progress, aside from work to gain signatures, there should be no events staged for or against the recall. Violations of the article are punishable by a fine ranging from NT$100,000 to NT$1 million (US$3,300 to US$33,000).
The commission has become the “political hitman” for certain leaders with its promises of legislative amendments, Huang said.
However, it sent the alliance a notice of violation of the law according to the exact article it claims to be amending, Huang wrote in his post.
In response, CEC Deputy Chairman Liu Yi-chou (劉義周) said that while the commission had said the article in question should be amended and that it would be proposing a draft amendment, the issue with the alliance was unrelated to the changes.
When the New Taipei City election committee was debating the request by the commission, it felt that because the recall was still in the signature drive stage and had not then been formalized, there was no justification for punitive measures, Liu said.
When the commission convened after the New Taipei City branch gave its answer, the commission felt the problem was whether it had been a formal case, but that there should not have been any promotion of the recall or events associated with it, Liu said.
“Huang’s post only reflects our latest answer to the New Taipei City branch on the specifics of the regulation and our request for further investigation into the incident,” Liu said, adding that the commission was not seeking revenge against the alliance.
Alliance cofounder Neil Peng (馮光遠) called for everyone who helped promote the recall event to “turn themselves in” to the commission.
Saying he had already called Chang and “turned himself in,” Peng added that if he was fined for promoting the recall event, he would be proud to have contributed more money to the national coffers.
Huang also said that all of the alliance’s pictures and videos are on Facebook and called on the commission to look online for proof and not drag the New Taipei City office into the fray.
“As the nation’s supervisory organization for elections, it is shameful that the commission is not upholding the principle of neutrality,” Huang said, adding that he hoped the commission would send him notice of a fine.
Additional reporting by Chiu Yen-ling
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