Protesters marched against New Power Party (NPP) Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday in New Taipei City’s Sijhih District (汐止), as efforts to recall the legislator continued.
Setting off from Sijhih Railway Station, hundreds of protesters in white shirts slowed traffic as they wound their way to Huang’s local office, pausing there briefly before returning to the station while calling for Huang to step down.
“This is a democratic war,” Greater Taipei Stability Power Alliance chairman Sun Chi-cheng (孫繼正) said.
“Have voters ever given Huang the authority to push for homosexual marriage? He is ignoring public opinion,” alliance secretary-general, Yu Hsin-yi (游信義) said, adding that he needed to “listen and change his arrogant attitude.”
Yu is a former legislative candidate for the Faith and Hope League, a party opposing marriage equality that did not win seats in last year’s elections.
Sun said Huang brought “disorder” to society in debates over new labor rules and the service trade agreement with China.
There has been a movement since December last year to recall Huang over his support for marriage equality, shortly after the passage of amendments to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) that lowered recall thresholds.
Activists passed the first stage petition signature threshold to begin the recall process within the same month and now must collect another 25,119 signatures before a recall vote could be held.
“We are still collecting signatures and hope that today’s large event can help us break through,” Sun said, estimating that the organizers are about 10,000 signatures short of the next threshold.
At a separate news conference celebrating the first anniversary of the NPP’s Hsinchu headquarters, Huang said his support for marriage equality was “unshakeable.”
“Supporting marriage equality has always been my stance as a legal scholar, and I made an open promise on the issue during the legislative elections,” he said.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
RSS