Taiwan voters reject recall of opposition lawmakers
Taiwanese voters have rejected an attempt to remove 24 opposition lawmakers, according to the official count, dealing a setback to President Lai Ching-te's party and its ambitions to gain control of the parliament.
All recall votes against 24 lawmakers from the largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), were rejected, according to live vote counts by Taiwanese media hours after the vote ended at 08:00 GMT on Saturday, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
Civic groups backed by Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had sought to unseat the KMT lawmakers, accusing them of being in cahoots with China.
The KMT, which advocates closer ties with Beijing, controls parliament with the help of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and has slammed the unprecedented recall effort as a DPP power grab.
“Let this political farce end here,” KMT chairman Eric Chu told reporters.
“No one can lose an election and then engage in a vicious recall,” he said, calling on Lai to “sincerely apologise” and “stop thinking about political infighting”.
Insisting the election could not be “reduced to victory or defeat between political parties”, Lin said the DPP would “reflect more prudently on the society’s response”.
The DPP needed to unseat a minimum of 12 KMT lawmakers to gain temporary control of parliament, with risk analysis firm Eurasia Group giving that outcome “a 60 percent probability”.
Lai’s party would then have needed to flip six seats in by-elections – that will follow the recall vote – later this year to cement its dominance in Taiwan’s 113-seat parliament.
Similar news
