Citizens Mowing Action yesterday handed about 150,000 valid signatures to Chen Kuan-jung (陳冠榮), the lead petitioner of a campaign to recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), bringing the total number of signatures to more than 510,000.
Reset Kaohsiung Headquarters said that as of Saturday night, it had received about 363,000 signatures from Wecare Kaohsiung, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and other petition locations before Citizens Mowing Action delivered its signatures.
The group delivered about 180,000 signatures, but 30,000 of them were in incorrect formats, Chen said.
Photo: Ko Yu-hao, Taipei Times
Along with Wecare Kaohsiung and the Taiwan Statebuilding Party’s signatures, the campaign is now “very close” to reaching the 580,000 signature threshold needed to launch a recall vote against Han, he said.
The campaigners will likely submit the signatures by the middle of next month, Wecare Kaohsiung founder Aaron Yin (尹立) said.
The petition has not ended, he said, adding that he hopes people would continue to sign the petition to reach the threshold.
The Kaohsiung City Election Commission on Friday said that it would impose a fine of NT$100,000 to NT$1 million (US$3,289 to US$32,891) on Reset Kaohsiung Headquarters in accordance with the the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
Reset Kaohsiung Headquarters has desks and staff at its premises, and should be considered the recall campaign’s offices, but when Chen proposed the recall at the end of last year, he did not say he would set up an office by the Jan. 2 deadline, the commission said.
Supporters of the campaign said the commission was “nitpicking.”
Reset Kaohsiung Headquarters is just a venue that accepts signatures, not Chen’s office, they said.
The commission denied it was “nitpicking,” saying it was acting on a report filed by members of the public.
The Administrative Procedure Act (行政程序法) gives those who were reported an opportunity to respond, it said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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