The Constitution 133 Alliance (憲法一三三實踐聯盟), launched with the purpose of putting into practice the right of recall as provided for by Article 133 of the Constitution, yesterday demanded an explanation from the Central Election Commission (CEC) after the latter rejected a petition submitted by the alliance aimed at initiating the recall of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇).
Recalling Wu, who is deemed by the alliance to be incompetent due to his consistent alignment with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, would first require the signatures of at least 2 percent of the electorate in Wu’s constituency, before a further petition from another 13 percent of the voters would make the proposal legitimate. After that, the recall proposal would require the support of at least a half of the eligible voters in the constituency at the time of Wu’s election.
The alliance on Nov. 4 handed more than 6,000 signatures to the CEC, but was informed on Wednesday last week that 1,008 of them were considered unqualified, bringing the number of valid signatories to less than the required threshold. The alliance was given five days to submit enough signatures.
Academia Sinica research fellow Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) accused the commission of denying the basic rights of the 1,008 people deemed by the CEC as being unqualified, while lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎), citing the Administrative Procedure Act (行政程序法), said the commission was supposed to explain why the signatures were rejected and also return the rejected petition.
Bringing about 1,400 more signatures yesterday, members of the alliance said they were prepared to resubmit the petition. However, at the gates in front of the building housing the CEC, alliance members were blocked by police officers and only a few representatives were allowed to enter the building to meet with CEC officials.
Screenwriter and author Neil Peng (馮光遠) said the CEC officials were arrogant and unwilling to explain the reason for the signatures being rejected. Peng said they left hurriedly without entering into negotiations.
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Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
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