A series of controversial amendments to laws governing the recall of public officials was sparked by the KMT's anxieties over the possibility of its legislators being recalled, putting the party's thin majority coalition at risk, Soochow University's Professor Chen Fang-yu tells TaiwanPlus.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Dr. Chen, over the past few days in the Legislative Yuan, we have seen the Kuomintang attempt
00:05to push through changes to the Recall Act law, which would now make it more difficult
00:10for voters to recall public officials.
00:14Why is the Kuomintang so rushed to get these changes through?
00:19The KMT and also plus another small party, TPP, they have the majority combined.
00:26However, although they have the majority, they do not want to follow the standard procedure
00:33of the legislation.
00:35For example, they deny the speaking or discussion of a lot of controversial legislations.
00:43People want to recall some of the legislators because they are just too much.
00:49So for example, they refuse to review for the national budget for the next year.
00:55And they are targeting, even targeting the constitutional court next.
01:00So people think that some of the legislators, they are just acting too much and they are
01:06just unlawfully doing a lot of this kind of legislative procedure.
01:14So people are trying to recall some of them.
01:17What sort of potential consequences is making the KMT terrified of facing a potential recall
01:24vote?
01:26Well, during the last 10 months, we have already seen a lot of controversial legislations in
01:32the legislature and people are angry about this.
01:36And we see several very big social movements and people around, especially the younger
01:44generations and a lot of social groups are protesting against KMT.
01:50And also we see that actually this year's elections, the general elections, only gives
01:57KMT a very slight version of the majority.
02:02They only have about three seats, three or four seats more than DPP.
02:08And also they have to cooperate with TPP to get the half of the votes they want in the
02:16legislature.
02:17So their majority is actually very fragile.
02:21If they lose just two or three seats, then they will lose the majority.