Campaign groups have submitted petitions to recall 19 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and a suspended Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) mayor, the Central Election Commission (CEC) confirmed yesterday.
Nineteen civil groups delivered boxes full of petitions to the commission’s headquarters in Taipei yesterday morning, where United Microelectronics Corp founder Robert Tsao (曹興誠) addressed the gathering.
Grassroots recall efforts are the true expression of the public’s will, to show that the people are the masters of the nation, Tsao said as spokesman for the Safeguard Taiwan, Anti-Communist Volunteers Alliance.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The 19 lawmakers potentially facing recall votes include KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) and Legislator Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇).
The other KMT legislators are Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀), Yeh Yuan-chih (葉元之), Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭), Tu Chuan-chi (涂權吉), Lu Ming-che (魯明哲), Wan Mei-ling (萬美玲), Lu Yu-ling (呂玉玲), Chiu Jo-hua (邱若華), Cheng Cheng-chien (鄭正鈐), Yu Hao (游顥), Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒), Liao Wei-hsiang (廖偉翔), Huang Chien-hao (黃健豪), Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋), Ting Hsueh-chung (丁學忠), Huang Chien-pin (黃建賓) and Ma Wen-chun (馬文君).
Suspended Hsinchu mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the TPP is also facing a recall vote, after she was suspended following a conviction for corruption in July last year.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The CEC said it would conduct an initial review of the recall petitions and, if approved, forward them to local election committees for review.
“These are citizen groups acting independently, working at the grassroots level and going beyond partisan politics,” Tsao said.
“China believes it can control Taiwan’s legislature by using money to buy off unscrupulous legislators, that it can subvert the country from within,” he said.
He said that KMT and TPP legislators feel emboldened to push through numerous bills in an “arrogant and autocratic manner.”
“However, they forgot that the main components of Taiwan’s political system are the citizens who vote in elections, not political parties,” Tsao said, calling the recall movement a “holy war” to clear out Chinese collaborators.
At a news conference at the legislature, Fu said that the KMT respects people expressing their opinions, “but we hope the ruling party would not stir up trouble.”
Fu urged people to remember President William Lai’s (賴清德) Lunar New Year message wishing that “every family can enjoy peace, togetherness and happiness,” and for “the ruling and opposition parties to have harmony and unity” in the coming year.
Separately, KMT youth wing members told reporters that their recall efforts against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus secretary-general Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and DPP Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) have reached the first-stage threshold, at 1 percent of all eligible voters in their electoral districts.
They vowed to submit the signatures and documentation to the CEC later this week.
At a DPP news conference, caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said that the current legislative session would be a “recall vote session” because “both sides have launched large-scale recall votes.”
“The large-scale recall vote initiative was started by the KMT,” Ker said, without elaborating. “The DPP is just responding.”
The recall votes would be completed by Sept. 1 at the latest, he said, adding that “the KMT would undoubtedly be defeated.”
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