Keelung election commission to verify petition to recall mayor

Taipei, July 5 (CNA) The Keelung election commission will be required to verify the petition submitted by a campaign drive to recall Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) of the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT), the Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Friday.

Under the Public Officials Election and Recall Act, an election commission is responsible for verifying the list of signatories and removing invalid signatures from the count within 40 days of the petition's submission, the CEC said in a statement.

According to the "Shanhai citizens' movement to remove Liang" (山海公民拆樑行動), the petition comprising 40,000 signatures was submitted to the Keelung City Election Commission in the afternoon.

The number of signatures received has exceeded the threshold (30,792 signatures) required to initiate a recall vote.

Taiwan's recall law stipulates that a recall of the mayor of an administrative region can be initiated if at least 10 percent of the area's voters signed a petition supporting it.

After the signatures attached to the petition have been reviewed, if the final count is lower than the required threshold, the Keelung commission is to return the petition to proponents and give them 10 days to make up the difference.

If enough valid signatures are collected, however, a recall vote should be held in 20 to 60 days, as Article 87 of the law stipulates.

If a recall election is to be held, the procedures and standards will be the same as in previous cases, the CEC said, citing the example of Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, who was recalled from his Kaohsiung mayorship in 2020.

For a recall vote to succeed, the number of votes cast in favor of the recall would have to exceed those cast against it and equal at least one-quarter of all eligible voters in the district.

Using the 312,207 people in Keelung eligible to vote in the 2024 presidential poll as a rough gauge of eligible voters, it would mean that about 78,000 people would have to support the recall for it to have a chance to pass.

The move to recall Hsieh, who has been in office since 2022, was initiated in March 2024 after a dispute over the controversial changing of the operator of Keelung E-Square Mall.

It was criticized by previous Keelung Mayor Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who was interior minister at the time.

The campaign's Facebook page has also alleged that Hsieh has failed to fulfill his campaign pledges and abused power.