The second phase of a petition to recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) has passed the signature threshold required to initiate a recall vote, the Kaohsiung City Election Commission said yesterday.
Citizen Mowing Action, which organized the petition with We Care Kaohsiung and other groups, on March 9 submitted 406,880 signatures to the commission for the second stage.
Kaohsiung Deputy Mayor Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文), the commission’s head, said the commission had mobilized nearly 600 civil servants over 29 days to review the signed petition copies.
The review process eliminated 29,218 copies, Chen said, adding that about 10,000 were from people who provided signatures in the first stage of the petition.
Another 13,000 were eliminated due to incorrect information about the signers’ residency, and another 2,000 were suspected to be forged, chen said.
However, the number of valid copies — 377,662 — still exceeded the 228,134 signatures required to launch a recall vote, he said.
A recall vote could be held on June 6 or 13, but the Central Election Commission (CEC) would make the final decision after receiving the city commission’s results today, Chen said.
According to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), the first step in the recall process is raising a proposal containing the signatures of at least 1 percent of a constituency’s eligible voters, which in the case of Kaohsiung was 22,800 signatures.
The CEC on Jan. 17 said that the petition had passed the first stage with 28,560 valid signatures.
In the second phase, the initiators of the petition — which was submitted one year after Han’s inauguration on Dec. 25, 2018 — had 60 days to collect signatures from at least 10 percent of the city’s eligible voters, or about 230,000, but not the same ones who signed in the first stage.
In a recall vote, a simple majority must vote in favor of recalling an official for the vote to succeed, with at least 25 percent of eligible voters participating, or about 570,000 people in this case, the CEC said.
A video allegedly featuring retired general Kao An-kuo (高安國) calling on Taiwanese military officers to surrender to China and overthrow the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government has sparked outrage and calls for him to be charged with treason. The video, titled “A message to Taiwanese military officers,” allegedly shows Kao saying: “I call on commanding officers of our military troops to stand up for Chinese nationalism, to take up this duty under heaven’s mandate to save Taiwanese from oppression and terrible suffering.” Dressed in military fatigues and a beret, the lieutenant general called on officers to overthrow the “fraudulent DPP regime,”
HASTY REVIEW CLAIMS: Medigen’s vaccine, which is to start phase 3 clinical trials later this year, should not have received emergency use authorization, Hau said Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) is to appeal the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authorization of Medigen Vaccine Biologics’ COVID-19 vaccine, he said yesterday. The administration on July 19 granted Medigen emergency use authorization, even though the drugmaker had not yet completed phase 3 clinical trials. The government should not authorize the use of a vaccine that has not completed phase 3 trials, Hau said in Taipei on the sidelines of an event to distribute boxed meals with former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康). Hau said the government had politicized
WORTH SOLVING: As 70% of water for public use comes from reservoirs, eutrophication is increasingly placing a strain on water filtration systems, an NTU professor said Most of the 26 reservoirs on Taiwan’s outlying islands are affected by eutrophication, while five out of the 20 category-one reservoirs on Taiwan proper are also affected by eutrophication, an Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) report showed. Eutrophication is caused by an excess of nutrients, which results in a buildup of plant life that prevents light and oxygen from entering the water. In April, the Mingde (明德), Baihe (白河), Jingmian (鏡面), Chengcing Lake (澄清湖) and Fengshan (鳳山) reservoirs were the five category-one reservoirs with the most eutrophication, the report said. The Fengshan reservoir scored 70 on Carlson’s trophic state index, the highest out of
NEW NUMBERS: No deaths were reported yesterday, but there were 12 local cases and two imported cases — people who had returned from Thailand and the US The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that COVID-19 restrictions are expected to remain in place after Monday next week, as it reported 12 local infections and two imported cases. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said the 12 local cases are 10 men and two women aged 10 to 80 who began experiencing symptoms between Thursday and Saturday. Six tested positive during isolation or upon ending it, he said, adding that the sources of infection have been identified in nine cases, while three remain unclear and would be investigated. Taoyuan reported five cases, all family
RSS