A campaign to recall Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has garnered 36,000 signatures, passing the signature threshold required to initiate a recall vote, campaign spokeswoman Lee Yen-jung (李晏蓉) said yesterday.
The petition to hold a recall counted 36,000 signatures as of Friday, more than the 30,792 needed for the proposition to go forward, she said.
To make room for clerical errors, organizers aim to obtain 40,000 signatures before submitting the petition on Friday next week to the Keelung City Election Commission, she said.
Photo: Lu Hsien-hsiu, Taipei Times
The Keelung City Election Commission should be fair and unbiased in examining the petition, she said, adding that the electorate’s right to decide should be respected.
The Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) stipulates that a recall election process for the mayor of an administrative region can be initiated if at least 10 percent of the jurisdiction’s voters signed a petition for it.
The election commission is responsible for evaluating the list of signatories and removing invalid signatures from the count within 40 days of the petition’s submission, the act stipulates.
Should the final count of signatures be lower than the legal limit, the commission is to return the petition to proponents and give them 10 days to make up the difference, it said.
If enough valid signatures are collected, a recall vote should be held in 20 to 60 days, the act stipulates.
The Keelung City Government estimated that if the petition is valid, a recall election would be held between September and December.
KMT Secretary-General Justin Huang (黃健庭) said the party in the coming days would organize a task force to deal with the recall challenge.
KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said that Hsieh is being targeted because he offended the Democratic Progressive Party’s interests.
The campaign to oust the mayor is disruptive to Keelung, Chu said.
Taiwan should avoid political struggles that could harm social harmony and prosperity, he added.
Additional reporting by Chou Ming-hung and Shih Hsiao-kuang
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
RSS