The Appendectomy Project recall campaign aimed at ousting legislators was nominated to participate in this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, one of the largest global events for the creative industries.
Appendectomy Project spokesperson Lin Zu-yi (林祖儀), also known as “Mr Lin from Taipei” (台北林先生), yesterday said that he hopes the team’s participation will publicize the vibrancy and progress of Taiwanese democracy on a global scale and add to the nation’s medal counts in the festival — one gold and three bronzes so far, he said.
A group of netizens founded the Appendectomy Project last year to try to oust lawmakers who had ignored the public in the wake of the Sunflower movement, and the project overcame many obstacles and established several landmarks in the nation’s recall elections, he said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The project began on May 5 last year and sought to collect the signatures of 13 percent of eligible voters in a constituency within 30 days to pass the required threshold for a legislative recall petition as stipulated by the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), Lin said, adding that the requirement was unreasonable.
With the help of the V Project online publicity campaign, the organizers recruited 3,000 volunteers to collect 60,000 signatures within eight hours to pass the threshold during the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 29 last year, leading to the nation’s first recall vote since 1994 and generating more than 5,000 news reports, he said.
Such an achievement amazed the festival’s organizers, who invited the team to participate in the competition, Lin said.
Even though the landmark recall referendum in February failed to unseat Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), the team has continued to push for amendments to the recall act and has held seminars nationwide to promote their ideas, Lin said.
The team plans to launch a legislative watchdog Web site with other groups to provide voters with a reference point for next year’s legislative elections, he said.
The head of the recall Tsai campaign, identified only as Ashley, said that although the referendum failed to attain the required 50 percent voter turnout, an overwhelming majority of the 79,303 votes cast supported the recall.
The Apppendectomy Project plans to push for a lowered recall election threshold to secure constitutional rights to remove ‘unworthy’ officials from office, she said.
The other two recall campaigns initiated by the project — to recall KMT legislators Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) and Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) — failed to draw support from at least 13 percent of voters from the lawmakers’ respective constituencies during the signature-gathering period to require referendums.
PACIFIC OCEAN: Defense experts have warned that the ‘Shandong,’ China’s second largest aircraft carrier, poses a serious threat to eastern Taiwan’s defenses The drills conducted by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong in the Western Pacific last week were more aimed at showcasing China’s military capabilities to the US rather than toward Taiwan, a Taiwanese defense expert said yesterday. Lin Yin-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the drills which involved dozens of warplanes sought to test China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities should the US and its allies attempt to interfere in a cross-strait conflict. Lin said that the latest Chinese drills coincided with a joint maritime exercise conducted by the US, South Korea
Thousands of bottles of Sriracha have been returned or destroyed after the discovery of excessive sulfur dioxide, a bleaching agent, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday. About 12,600 bottles totaling 9,991.8kg of the hot sauce imported from the US by Emporium Corp (河洛企業) were flagged at the border for containing illegal levels of sulfur dioxide, the FDA said in its regular border inspection announcement. Inspectors discovered 0.5g per kilogram of the common bleaching agent and preservative, higher than the 0.03g permitted, it said. As it is the first time within six months the product has been flagged, Sriracha products from
Two people were killed and another nine injured yesterday after being stung by hornets while hiking in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳), with officials warning against wearing perfume or straying from trails during the autumn to avoid the potentially deadly creatures. Seven of the hikers only sustained minor injuries after being stung along the Bafenliao Hiking Trail (八分寮) and made their way down the mountain with a guide, the New Taipei City Fire Department said. Four of them — all male — sustained more serious injuries and were assisted when leaving the mountain, the department said. Two of them, a man surnamed
CHANGES: While NCCU opened the nation’s first co-ed dorm in Mucha, a recent survey showed that Taiwanese are in favor of abolishing gender segregation at high schools National Chengchi University (NCCU) has opened a co-ed dormitory, a first in Taiwan among state-funded Taiwan universities. The 22 duplexes are at the renovated “Huanan New Village,” in Taipei City’s Mucha (木柵) area, near the NCCU campus, a school official said yesterday. Twenty-two out of 37 group applications were selected in a lottery draw to select who would be chosen to live in the units, which can either be shared by up to eight students if the unit has four bedrooms, or up to 10 students if it is a five-bedroom unit, officials said. Completed in 1964 for campus staff housing,