Civil groups yesterday submitted 30,000 petition papers to the Central Election Commission (CEC) in a bid to recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate.
While only 22,814 petition papers are required in the initial stage of a mayoral recall, the groups have collected nearly 300,000, Wecare Kaohsiung founder Aaron Yin (尹立) said.
Once the CEC confirms their application, they would launch the second stage, for which they would collect at least 228,134 petition papers, the groups said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
If successful, a recall vote could be expected in May or June, they said.
Wecare Kaohsiung, Citizen Mowing Action and other groups launched a campaign to recall Han on June 27 after the mayor announced earlier that month that he would join the KMT’s presidential primary, Yin said.
Civil groups are recalling Han because he has abandoned his mayoral responsibilities in Kaohsiung, said Chen Kuan-jung (陳冠榮), initiator of the recall.
As mayor, the KMT presidential candidate has achieved little by way of policy results, and has even made multiple sexist and racist remarks, which have “seriously damaged the city’s and the nation’s image,” he said.
Yin said that for the next stage, the groups would form an alliance to recall Han, which would be headed by Citizen Mowing Action spokesman Lee Yi-chieh (李佾潔).
“We are confident that we can collect enough petition papers,” Yin added.
Han said that he thinks the recall campaign is “completely unacceptable,” as it is likely political manipulation.
While he “fully respects” people’s right to recall elected officials, he believes that the ongoing recall campaign would be remembered as a “very, very distorted page in Taiwan’s history of democracy,” Han told reporters in Taipei.
That the recall campaign began in February, just two month after he became mayor, shows that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) thinks it owns Kaohsiung, he said, hinting that the DPP might be behind the campaign.
The DPP did a terrible job when they controlled the city government and the “people of Kaohsiung have woken up,” he said.
Han’s campaign office spokeswoman Anne Wang (王淺秋) questioned the legality of the recall campaign, saying that Article 75 of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) states that officials cannot be recalled until a year after they are sworn in.
Civil groups might have breached the act by collecting petition papers before Wednesday, the anniversary of Han’s swearing-in ceremony, she said.
There is no law prohibiting the signing of recall petition papers before an official has been in office one year, the commission said, citing a document from the Ministry of the Interior.
The one-year requirement stipulated in Article 75 pertains to the submission of the petition papers to authorities, the commission said.
To recall the mayor, 25 percent of Kaohsiung’s electorate, or about 580,000 people, must vote in favor of recalling him, with the number of “yes” votes exceeding the number of “no” votes.
If passed, it would be the first time that the mayor of a special municipality had been recalled.
Additional reporting by Huang Hsin-po
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