No easy fix for recall procedure

No easy fix for recall procedure By Chin Heng-wei 金恒煒 The recall of former Taiwan Statebuilding Party legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) — the party’s only member of the Legislative Yuan — in Taichung’s second electoral district has raised questions about whether the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) needs to be amended again. The most high-level advocate of this idea is former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水). Lin believes that Chen’s recall was the direct result of the rush in 2016 to amend the original version of the act. The DPP at the time supported the amendment, which lowered the requirements for a recall. Lin says that the act needs to be amended again because its post-2016 version puts small political parties in jeopardy. However, the reason for amending the act in 2016 was simple: Following the 2014 Sunflower movement, seven then-legislators of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆), Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正), Alex Tsai (蔡正元), Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池), Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) and Chiang Huei-chen (江惠貞) — were subjected to recall votes as part of the so-called “Appendectomy Project,” a pun based on the Chinese word for appendectomy’s likeness to “pan-blue legislator.” None of the recalls were successful, mainly because of the high threshold at the time. More than half of eligible voters had to ratify the proposal and at least half had to vote for the recall, as had been devised by the KMT. The two high thresholds were essentially a cast-iron guarantee that no recall vote would succeed. So, is the recall act in its post-2016 version the main culprit behind Chen’s defeat? To answer that, some additional cases must be analysed. Chen was recalled with 51.72 percent turnout and 51.48 percent of votes in favor of his recall, which means that both criteria of the pre-2016 version of the act would have been met. Even under the previous system with 50 percent thresholds, Chen would still have been recalled. Is the new system better than the old? Last year’s recall of then-Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) can serve as a counter example. In Han’s case, 939,090 voted in favor of recalling him, while 25,051 voted against, so that the votes in favor far outstripped those opposed to his ouster, and the recall was successful. However, because there was only a 42.14 percent voter turnout, falling short of the 50 percent needed before 2016, Han would not have been recalled under the old system. The question for Lin is if the DPP had not amended the law, would Han not still be Kaohsiung mayor? There is another case, which sits somewhere between Chen’s and Han’s, namely the attempted recall of former New Power Party legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌). Huang’s recall vote was something of a trial run for the new, post-amendment version of the recall act. The result was that there were more votes in favor of his recall than against, but the turnout was less than one-quarter of eligible voters in his district, and the recall failed. In this case, it seems, the lower threshold did not sound the death knell of Huang, a legislator of a small party. If the reader will allow a small digression: Even though each name on the list of recall proposals as part of the Appendectomy Project escaped recall at the time, not one of them retained their seats: All among them who ran in the next legislative election got voted out. Huang Kuo-chang also did not run for re-election in his district and was placed fourth on the party’s legislator-at-large list, failing to win a seat. If these statistics do not entirely answer the question of the amended act’s political effect, they at least provide food for thought. Whether the threshold is high or low is no guarantee of the result. Can the DPP amend the recall act because of the result of Chen’s recall vote? Of course it can. Does the KMT have a say in this? No, it does not. The KMT, in its attempts to frustrate the rights of Taiwanese to recall public servants and elected officials, not only devised legislation that meant a successful recall was all but impossible, it also repeatedly revised legislation to block voters’ attempts to file recall petitions, the most egregious examples being the “[KMT Legislator] Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) clause” and the “Appendectomy Project clause.” Chen’s recall is certainly a setback, but the Taiwan Statebuilding Party might benefit from sympathy votes in the next election. The family of former KMT legislator Yen Kuan-hen (顏寬恆) might try to mobilize votes in Taichung’s second electoral district to get Yen, who last year lost his seat to Chen, back into power, but even that campaign will not stop Taiwan’s democracy from moving from strength to strength. Chin Heng-wei is a political commentator. Translated by Paul Cooper