Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) publicly opposed the recall movement, even accompanying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) in campaigning on the streets at Shuanglian Market in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) on June 15.
“If a project is done well, why would you tear it down and start over?” Lee said. “It only needs to be rebuilt if it was done poorly. How can you justify recalling someone just because they are from a different political party?”
While studying structural dynamics at National Taiwan University’s Department of Civil Engineering, the professor often reminded us: “Completing the construction of a bridge is only the first step. What’s truly important is long-term monitoring and risk assessment.”
Bridges age, load capacities change and cracks appear — these are all issues that engineers must constantly keep in mind. Sometimes repairs and reinforcements are required before any incident even occurs.
Our professor also said: “The most dangerous aspect of engineering is not the potential for mistakes; it is when no one dares take responsibility for a mistake that has already been made.”
After entering education, I increasingly came to realize that my professor’s words also hold true for democratic systems.
A democratic system cannot be left unattended after it is established. It is much like a bridge — if it is not regularly maintained and inspected, there is a risk that it could collapse. Within a democratic system, recalls are a right and a responsibility for citizens to correct themselves. In the event that an elected representative begins to drift away from the public’s will — even focusing solely on their own personal interests or that of their political party — then voters undoubtedly have the right and the duty to call them into question, or use their ballots to voice their distrust.
Lee’s use of engineering logic to reject the recall movement is a flawed analogy built upon his own political bias. When a structure is defective, it must be reinforced — likewise, when an elected representative deviates from public opinion, citizens can correct them. The recall is the democratic system’s corrective mechanism, designed to help citizens do just that.
The notion that an elected representative’s term must be completed in full and should not be cut short by a recall is contradictory and greatly harmful to democratic education.
The right to recall is guaranteed under the Constitution and is a mechanism essential for the public to hold their elected representatives to account. Our support for the recall campaign is about returning power to the hands of the public to allow for the healthy operation of our democratic system. When someone stands up and declares that a representative has gone off course and no longer meets the public’s expectations, they are committing a clear-headed and courageous act — a pillar supporting a functional democracy. Recalls are an unfortunate, but necessary method for the public to correct our nation’s course. It is our democratic system undergoing self-repair. Only when the public is willing to take part in its oversight would the bridge of democracy remain stable and endure.
Pan Wei-yiu is a policymaker at the Taiwan Nation Alliance and president of the Union of Taiwanese Teachers.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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