Campaigners from across Taiwan are to submit recall proposals against 12 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers from Taipei, New Taipei City, Hsinchu County and Taichung to the Central Election Commission (CEC) this afternoon, bringing the total number of recall petitions filed against KMT legislators to 32.
United Microelectronics Corp founder Robert Tsao (曹興誠), who also serves as spokesman for the Safeguard Taiwan, Anti-Communist Volunteers Alliance, is to lead various campaign groups to the commission in Taipei to submit a second batch of petitions, after 19 petitions against KMT lawmakers were submitted on Monday last week.
The KMT and its Youth League have responded by submitting recall petitions of their own against 13 Democratic Progressive Party legislators.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Of the 39 constituencies represented by KMT lawmakers, including those from three indigenous constituencies, 31 now face recalls.
Campaigners are still compiling signatures to recall legislators elected in Keelung, Changhua County, Kinmen County and Miaoli County.
This leaves only one elected representative from the KMT not yet targeted for recalls, Chen Hsueh-sheng (陳雪生) of Lienchiang County.
The groups are today submitting signatures to recall KMT legislators Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強), Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) and Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) of Taipei, as well as Hung Mong-kai (洪孟楷), Chang Chih-lun (張智倫), Lin Te-fu (林德福), Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) and Liao Hsien-hsiang (廖先翔) of New Taipei City.
Proposals are also to be submitted to recall KMT legislators Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) and Lin Szu-ming (林思銘) of Hsinchu County, along with Taichung’s Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Deputy Legislative Speaker Johnny Chiang (江啟臣).
In Taichung, campaign groups today announced that they had reached the first stage of the process to recall Yang and Chiang.
According to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), signatures must total at least 1 percent of the total voters in the electoral district where the official was elected.
The group seeking to recall Chiang said it was a race against the clock, but in just eight days over the Lunar New Year, between Jan. 27 and Monday last week, campaigners collected more than 3,000 signatures.
Additional reporting by Ou Su-mei
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS