The Appendectomy Project’s petition to recall Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) raced past the required 38,939 signatories on election day, paving the way for a referendum to recall Tsai, organizers said.
Organizers of the project, who set up 113 stands near polling stations across Tsai’s constituency on Saturday, said they collected more than 40,000 signatures by late Saturday night, well past the required 13 percent threshold.
The project will attempt to raise the number of signatories to more than 50,000 before the end of the petition period on Dec. 15 to ensure the petition does not get disqualified by the Central Election Commission, said the project’s spokesperson, known as “Mr Lin From Taipei” (台北林先生).
By law, the commission would have 40 days to verify the information provided by the petitioners. After the petition is announced as valid, a recall referendum must be held within another 30 days, which means the referendum to decide Tsai’s fate could be held around late February.
Two other recall campaigns against KMT legislators Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) and Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) did not fare so well, with less than half of the required signatures collected.
The name Appendectomy Project was chosen because the term for pan-blue camp legislators in Mandarin Chinese, lan wei (藍委), is pronounced the same as the word for “appendix” (闌尾).
Tsai, who also served as campaign manager for KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文), yesterday morning reportedly went to China and was unreachable by telephone.
Additional reporting by Lu Heng-chien
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