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.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
A British man was arrested for attempting to smuggle 14.37kg of marijuana into Taiwan through Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taipei Customs said late yesterday. The man, who arrived from Bangkok at 9pm on Friday, was asked by customs officers to open his luggage during a random inspection, Taipei Customs said in a news release. The passenger, whose identity was not disclosed, refused to open his suitcase and tried to flee the restricted area. He was eventually subdued by three customs officials and an Aviation Police Bureau officer. A later search of his checked luggage uncovered 14.37kg of marijuana buds. The case was handed over
RSS