Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei chapter director Huang Lu Chin-ju (黃呂錦茹) on Friday last week was detained and held incommunicado for allegedly agreeing to or instructing the use of forged signatures to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators.
The KMT, supported by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), on Saturday held a large rally in front of the Presidential Office Building framing it as a fight against “anti-green communists and dictatorship,” and claiming that the DPP is carrying out political purges against opposition parties.
KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said that the DPP has manipulated the judiciary to prosecute and criminally charge KMT members, calling it “judicial injustice” and the “darkest day in Taiwan’s democracy.”
Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT called for prosecutors to not be “political tools” of the government.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said it is unfair to “only prosecute the blue and not the green.”
Several KMT legislators said the detention of Huang is “against the proportionality principle.” Seven-time KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said that “even if they [recall proposal initiators] made a mistake, it is only forgery ... which has always been punished very lightly,” while KMT Legislator Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) repeatedly asked Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau Director-General Chen Pai-li (陳白立) whether the bureau also searched the DPP headquarters.
However, all of them neglected the “proportionality principle” and failed to answer why among 35 petitions to recall KMT legislators, only 12 cases of signatures from deceased people were found, while among 17 proposals to recall DPP legislators, 1,784 cases of signatures from deceased people were found.
Two former KMT members even said that their names were used as recall proposal initiators without their consent.
The argument behind the KMT’s rally on Saturday is clearly untenable. Ironically, the ability to organize a large public rally demonstrated that the government is not a dictatorship, in sharp contrast to how countless Taiwanese were killed or imprisoned during the decades-long White Terror era during the rule of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), both of the KMT.
Moreover, the KMT is deliberately avoiding the real issue — the number of suspected forged signatures of deceased people in their petitions is about 150 times that of the petitions to recall 35 KMT legislators — by prevaricating and trying to undermine public confidence in judicial independence.
The KMT has also learned from the TPP to frame any prosecution against its members as “political persecution” to gain sympathy or fuel contempt toward the DPP-led government, mainly to help save its legislators from being recalled, but voters are unlikely to be fooled so easily. Civic groups’ recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers have already set a good example of how signatures can be collected with diligence and integrity, in clear contrast to the KMT-led recall campaigns.
Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on April 9 said that the first group of Indian workers could arrive as early as this year as part of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India and the India Taipei Association. Signed in February 2024, the MOU stipulates that Taipei would decide the number of migrant workers and which industries would employ them, while New Delhi would manage recruitment and training. Employment would be governed by the laws of both countries. Months after its signing, the two sides agreed that 1,000 migrant workers from India would
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
On March 31, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs released declassified diplomatic records from 1995 that drew wide domestic media attention. One revelation stood out: North Korea had once raised the possibility of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In a meeting with visiting Chinese officials in May 1995, as then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) prepared for a visit to South Korea, North Korean officials objected to Beijing’s growing ties with Seoul and raised Taiwan directly. According to the newly released records, North Korean officials asked why Pyongyang should refrain from developing relations with Taiwan while China and South Korea were expanding high-level
Japan’s imminent easing of arms export rules has sparked strong interest from Warsaw to Manila, Reuters reporting found, as US President Donald Trump wavers on security commitments to allies, and the wars in Iran and Ukraine strain US weapons supplies. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party approved the changes this week as she tries to invigorate the pacifist country’s military industrial base. Her government would formally adopt the new rules as soon as this month, three Japanese government officials told Reuters. Despite largely isolating itself from global arms markets since World War II, Japan spends enough on its own
RSS