Keelung Votes on Mayor Hsieh's Future as Leader of the City
Voters in Taiwan's northern Keelung City are voting on whether to remove Mayor George Hsieh from office. If the recall motion is successful, he will be just the second mayor in Taiwan to be recalled from the job.
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00:00Voting is underway in the northern city of Jilong to recall its mayor, George Xie.
00:05Civic groups have been campaigning for months to remove the 49-year-old mayor, accusing
00:09him of corruption and incompetence.
00:11Joining us now live from Jilong with the latest is our reporter Joyce Zeng.
00:14Joyce, how's it looking at the polls there?
00:17Hey Jaime, we're here in Jilong, about a half hour's drive north from the capital, and people
00:25have been slowly trickling through this polling booth in the city center for the recall vote
00:30of the city's mayor, George Xie.
00:33He himself came out to cast his ballot earlier today, and polling centers were a lot busier
00:38earlier in the morning across the city, some seeing long lines.
00:42Now, Xie has been in office just under two years, but for months now, a civil group has
00:47been campaigning to remove him, arguing that he's incompetent.
00:52There are several grievances against the politician, but the main one is the alleged
00:56mishandling of a shopping mall development, which they suspect involved abuse of power
01:01and also corruption.
01:02Now, if Xie's recall is successful today, he would be just the second mayor in Taiwan's
01:08history to be removed after Han Kuo-yu of Kaohsiung in 2020.
01:12Xie and his party, the KMT, have maintained his innocence and say that the right to recall
01:18should not be used as a political tool to overturn elections, which is what they believe
01:23is happening here.
01:23Jaime?
01:26And so what needs to happen here for the recall motion to succeed?
01:33Well, it's a bit complicated, but essentially, for the vote to even be considered valid,
01:38at least half of the city's eligible voters must turn up today and vote.
01:43From there, a simple majority will decide whether the motion passes, and essentially,
01:48the recall effort would need over 77,000 votes to succeed.
01:52Now, as of now, there's about two hours left for Kaohsiung citizens to come out and make
01:57their voices heard.
01:58Jaime?