5 more KMT lawmakers to face recall votes on Aug. 23: CEC

Taipei, July 18 (CNA) Five additional lawmakers from Taiwan's main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) will face recall votes, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said Friday, bringing the total number of KMT legislators subject to public votes on whether they should remain in office to 31.

According to the CEC, recall initiatives targeting KMT lawmakers Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才), Johnny Chiang (江啓臣), Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lin Szu-ming (林思銘) have cleared the second and final hurdle and will therefore be put on the ballot.

The votes will be held on Aug. 23, the same day that two other KMT lawmakers -- Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and Yu Hao (游顥) -- are also scheduled to face recall elections.

The CEC said televised briefings featuring both the recall campaigners and the five targeted lawmakers will be held between Aug. 13 and Aug. 22.

Friday's announcement means that 31 out of the 39 KMT lawmakers directly elected in January 2024 now face the possibility of being removed from office -- an unprecedented development that could shake up Taiwan's national legislature and political scene.

The campaigns aimed at ousting the KMT lawmakers, launched by civil society groups and widely backed by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, are now entering their final phase, with the first wave of recall votes targeting 24 of them slated for July 26.

Taiwan's recall mechanism allows voters to remove lawmakers through public votes, but it does not follow the first-past-the-post system used in general elections.

For a recall vote to pass, the number of votes in favor of ousting a lawmaker must exceed the number of votes against. The number of votes in favor must also represent at least a quarter of all eligible voters in a given constituency.

Once a recall passes, a by-election must be held within three months to elect a replacement.

To trigger a recall vote, campaigners must first gather signatures from at least 1 percent of eligible voters in a constituency, followed by signatures from 10 percent in the second stage.