In January 2024 Taiwan’s current President Lai Ching-te won the election against two other candidates. (Taiwan has no run off elections.)
His Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) though, which supports Taiwan’s independence from China, failed to get a majority in parliament. The opposition was thus, by controlling the budget, able to prevent Lai Ching-te from furthering a split from the Chinese homeland.
Like many recent election winners in so called democracies Lai Ching-te set out to manipulate the system to win powers the voters had been unwilling to concede to him. He organized a recall campaign against dozens of opposition lawmakers in the hope to gain a majority in parliament.
The New York Times reporting of it (archived) seemed to be in favor of this:
Voters in Taiwan face a critical decision on Saturday: whether to throw out 24 opposition lawmakers they elected just last year, in an extraordinary recall campaign that could put more power in the president’s hands but add to tensions with Beijing.The vote threatens to flip the legislative balance in favor of President Lai Ching-te, who wants Taiwan to forge a future separate from China, against an opposition that favors closer ties with Beijing.
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This weekend, two dozen Nationalist Party lawmakers face recall votes; an additional seven will next month.To supporters, the “great recall” campaign reflects the vigor of Taiwan’s democracy, which emerged in the 1980s after decades of authoritarian rule under the Nationalist Party. Although a successful campaign would help Mr. Lai, many activists promoting the recalls say they are acting independently.
“We’re building a decentralized grass-roots movement,” said Molly Kuo, an organizer of one of the recall efforts in New Taipei. “We’re witnessing a deepening of democracy.”
A “decentralized grass-roots movement” that is running a well organized, millions of dollars campaign against parliament members of one specific party???
Recall of a significant number of opposition lawmakers would make it much easier for Mr. Lai to push his agenda, which includes shifting Taiwan’s economy further from China. He could also appoint his preferred judges to Taiwan’s high court.
The recall votes were held today and the results are in. The voters did not fall for it.
In a rather pathetic attempt to cover the loss of its campaign the DDP party is urging everyone to not see the whole affair as what it is:
The defeat of a recall campaign against 24 KMT lawmakers should not be interpreted as the outcome of a struggle between political parties, the DPP argued Saturday.Results showed all 24 legislators survived the vote, with anti-recall votes surpassing pro-recall in every election district, per the Central Election Commission.
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Speaking to reporters Saturday evening, DPP Legislative Caucus Secretary-General Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) called on the public not to rush to conclusions.The party’s secretary-general, Lin Yu-chang (林右昌), echoed her remarks, saying the recall votes had not been a fight between political parties, so the result should not be interpreted as a victory or a defeat for one party or another, the Liberty Times reported.
Sure.
As Arnaud Bertrand comments:
[This] couldn’t be more ironic coming from the same party that explicitly framed the entire campaign as exactly this: presenting themselves, the DPP, as heroically trying to “save Taiwan’s democracy” from the KMT, painting them as existential threats because of their pro-China bent. But now that they lost they suddenly want to pretend it was all just a non-partisan civic exercise.
The NYT report, written before the voting, noticed that this outcome would have consequences:
Widespread rejection of the recalls could hint at tepid support for Mr. Lai’s party ahead of local and presidential elections, experts say.
With his anti-China position Lai Ching-te is the U.S.’ preferred candidate. As he is now likely to lose the next presidential election Taiwan should watch out for some of the usual U.S. directed manipulations.