Latest news with #DemocraticProgressiveParty
South China Morning Post
16 hours ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Taiwan donation vow to Israeli settlement is cynical and foolish
The cynicism is breathtaking. Or maybe it's just foolishness. With Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te and his minions at the Democratic Progressive Party, it's often hard to tell. Advertisement While Israel is busy committing genocide in Gaza, and Jewish settlers and the military are running rampant across the occupied West Bank, Taipei has pledged to donate to an Israeli settlement for a health project there. At least 964 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed between the start of the Gaza war in October 2023 and the middle of this month. About 1,400 Palestinian homes have either been demolished or face being torn down, according to the UN Human Rights Office. But rest assured the health project won't be serving Palestinians, nor has there been any pretence that it would. Now, Israel doesn't need the donation. The GDP per capita of Taiwan and that of Israel are comparable, with the island's only slightly higher. Couldn't Taiwan at least donate to some project inside Israel proper, and thus avoid any controversy? But that would be a waste of time for Israel. The whole point, of course, is to make Taipei donate inside the illegal military occupation! Why? Because the donation, if and when it is made, would be interpreted as Taiwan's tacit endorsement of the illegal Israeli occupation. Advertisement However, it would also be a direct breach of international law. The Israeli military occupation is universally recognised as illegal. A year ago, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion stating that all states must prevent trade and investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the unlawful occupation by Israel.
The Independent
17 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Explained: Taiwan's unprecedented recall vote and how it could shift power
Taiwan is preparing for its biggest-ever recall election on Saturday targeting nearly a fifth of its lawmakers, all from the main opposition party. The outcome could shift the balance of power and offer president Lai Ching Te's Democratic Progressive Party a brief window to take control of the parliament. The unprecedented recall vote is being led by civic groups who accuse the opposition Kuomintang of working against Taiwan's interests by reducing key budgets, especially for defence, and pushing legislation to weaken the government. They accuse the KMT lawmakers of acting in line with China's interests and describe their campaign as an 'anti-communist' movement. The KMT denies having a pro-China stance, maintaining that it's exercising its constitutional duty to scrutinise government policy and curb waste. Party officials say the recall campaign is politically motivated and an attempt by Mr Lai's party to impose 'dictatorship' and undermine the will of voters who delivered the opposition and its allies a legislative majority in last year's election. Although Mr Lai won the presidency last year, his party lost its majority in the 113-member parliament. The KMT and the smaller Taiwan People's Party, along with independent allies, now control 62 seats, compared to the ruling party's 51. This shift enabled the opposition to stall the government's legislative agenda and block proposed spending increases, particularly in areas like defence. A total of 24 opposition lawmakers now face recall votes on Saturday, with seven more votes scheduled for 23 August. The recall will proceed only if turnout exceeds 25 per cent of registered voters in the constituency and the number of votes in favour of removal exceeds those against. If a recall is successful, a by-election must be held within three months. The KMT is free to nominate new candidates or field the same ones, many of whom represent strongholds with safe margins. Ruling party leaders have been actively campaigning for the recall campaign. Mr Lai urged party members last month to back the campaign, although he did not personally join the trail. Critics of the KMT argue the recalls are necessary to counter what they see as the party's alignment with Beijing's agenda. Chinese state media and officials have publicly condemned the recall campaign, echoing KMT arguments and accusing Mr Lai of authoritarianism. Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, described the recalls as part of Mr Lai's alleged campaign to 'suppress the opposition' and govern through 'dictatorship under the guise of democracy'. Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council dismissed the remarks on Wednesday claiming the Chinese Communist Party 's attempt to influence Taiwan's democratic process was 'evident and clear'. "Recall in Taiwan is a civil right guaranteed by the constitution, and it is up to the people of Taiwan to decide who should or should not be removed from office,' it said in a statement, citing findings from local research body IORG documenting over 400 instances of Chinese state media content criticising the recall as 'green terror' or authoritarian. Robert Tsao, a billionaire backing the recall effort, said China's interference only confirmed the KMT's ties to Beijing. 'It shows they are together with the Communist Party. It helps us,' he said at a recent rally. KMT officials distanced themselves from the support voiced by China, insisting the party neither solicited nor welcomed Beijing's backing. 'We feel the same way as all the people of Taiwan - this is our business,' said party spokesperson Crystal Yang. 'It is the two parties, the DPP and the KMT, fighting for public support... It has nothing to do with the mainland.' Tony Lin, who chairs the KMT's Culture and Communication Committee, defended the party's engagement with China, stating it was necessary for keeping diplomatic channels open in the absence of dialogue between Beijing and Mr Lai's administration. 'We are pro-communication,' he said. 'Not pro-Beijing.' The recalls come at a time of heightened cross-strait tensions, with China ramping up military exercises and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan. Despite repeated offers for talks, Mr Lai's government has been spurned by Beijing, which labels him a separatist.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Total recall? Campaigners employ quirk of Taiwan's political system to turn on ‘pro-China' candidates
On a steamy night deep in one of Taipei's most conservative suburbs, a group of elderly neighbours are yelling at each other next to a garbage truck. They have just been handed a leaflet by a university student calling on them to recall – expel – their sitting legislator. There are hundreds of these campaigners across Taiwan, targeting members of the Kuomintang (KMT) opposition who they accuse of being too pro-China. But this neighbourhood is deeply loyal to the party, and the campaigners are not welcome. A woman shouts angrily: 'Throw that leaflet away! … We are against the recall!' The group of activists are pushing to overturn the balance of power in Taiwan's government, just 18 months after the national election. They are using an extraordinary mechanism that allows civilians to vacate individual seats midterm, in a way it has never been used before. The campaign's success has taken everyone by surprise. More than 30 of Taiwan's 113 legislators are facing recall – the highest number in Taiwan's history. All of them come from the opposition KMT party. The campaign has set off a political storm across Taiwan, with arrests, assaults, and accusations of authoritarianism and collaboration, fuelling the island's already deep political divisions. The first 24 recall votes will take place on Saturday, and another seven in August, at a cost equivalent to about £40m. If just six are expelled the party will lose its majority in parliament to the ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP). Both sides say they are fighting for Taiwan's democracy. In the 2024 election Lai Ching-te and the DPP won the presidency but not the legislature, where the KMT and smaller Taiwan People's party hold the majority. The two have spent much of the past year blocking bills and stalling constitutional court appointments, sparking brawls indside the legislature and mass protests outside, from where the recall movement was born. The campaigners calling for the KMT recall are a collection of civic groups who have won the backing of the ruling DPP. What started as a protest against opposition obstructionism has become about the existential threat of China, where the ruling Communist party (CCP) plans to annex Taiwan. Campaigners claim the targeted legislators are too close to China and are undermining Taiwan's national security, pointing to those who have visited Beijing and met with senior officials, and a raft of proposed China-related bills that they say will weaken Taiwan's defences. 'Certainly a good number of these legislators have stated on the record their support for pro-Beijing policy, or at the least strong anti-DPP policy,' says Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Taiwan University. 'There's a difference between anti-DPP and pro-Beijing, but from the recallers' perspective these have become synonymous.' The KMT denies the accusations against its MPs. The party officially opposes annexation by the CCP but argues the way to preserve peace is through friendlier ties with Beijing. Fu Kun-chi, a controversial senior KMT legislator up for recall, told Nikkei Asia it was in the spirit of 'fostering mutual understanding' that he went to Beijing and met with Wang Huning, Xi Jinping's chief adviser overseeing Taiwan relations. Critics said Fu was 'selling out Taiwan'. The KMT and its supporters see the recalls as a grab for power by people who can't accept the legitimate election results. They are misusing Taiwan's democratic processes to 'suppress opposition voices', a senior KMT official told a recent background briefing. The recall mechanism is a drawn-out process that first requires two rounds of signature collections in an electorate: 1% of voting residents and then a separate 10%. Once approved by electoral officials a date is set for the recall vote. At least 25% of voters must turn out, and a majority must agree to vacate the seat. If successful, a byelection with new candidates is held within three months, and the recalled legislator is banned from running again for seven years. Thousands of campaigners have swarmed street corners, transit stations, and the designated garbage collection points where residents bring their trash to trucks each night – first chasing signatures and now lobbying for votes. The campaign battle between the two sides has been hostile, scandal-filled, and very public. Retaliatory petitions against DPP seats by the KMT failed spectacularly. None were approved, and dozens of officials were arrested on accusations of faking signatures and using the names of dead residents to fill petitions. In April the KMT party chief, Eric Chu, called Lai a 'dictator' who is 'more communist than the communists, more fascist than the fascists'. A KMT spokesman told the Guardian Chu's comments were 'a sharp critique of what he sees as the DPP's growing authoritarian tendencies'. In June Lai drew criticism of his own after he appeared to refer to opposition forces as 'impurities' that needed to be 'driven out', in one of a planned 10 speeches designed to 'unify the nation'. The Presidential office said the comments were taken out of context and his speech was 'about using democracy to temper the power of national unity'. That same month Robert Tsao, a tech tycoon supporting the recall campaign, told Nikkei Asia that he wanted to 'burn' down the entire KMT party, which he called a 'Trojan horse' for Beijing. On the ground, campaign workers have been doxed and assaulted in the streets – those working in Dazhi wore body cameras and were accompanied by a well-built volunteer as their security guard. The cities and towns are plastered with billboards, while trucks loaded with LCD screens drive laps of the streets blaring accusations of treason and collaboration. Tens of thousands of people have protested for and against the recall around Taiwan. 'These people were elected, and you're wasting resources to try and turn them out,' said Patrick at a pro-opposition rally. 'We need to keep the country running smoothly instead of constantly wasting money.' In Dazhi, resident Sarah Li says pro-China legislators have to go. She says they are blinded by favourable treatment from Beijing and supporters – like most of her neighbours – are ignoring the current climate to stay loyal to their party. 'They don't care about people's lives,' she says of the legislators. 'They just want power, political power.' It's illegal to discuss polling this close to the vote, but observers, like Taiwan-based political commentator Courtney Donovan Smith, say that people in support of the recall are far more likely to actually go and vote. 'There's more people against these recalls, but they're not all that motivated,' he says. Beijing is likely watching the chaos with some glee. Fomenting social division is a key part of its strategy, and right now local politics is doing the CCP's job. Much of the saga has made its way into CCP propaganda seeking to undermine Taiwan's government with state media reporting the campaign as 'extremist' activity to 'remove opposition voices'. At a press briefing on Friday, Taiwan's vice-president, Hsiao Bi-Khim, said the recalls were a constitutional civic right just like elections, and a sign of Taiwan's 'robust' democracy. 'I think it's pretty obvious that China has been very proactive in trying to utilise hybrid means of disrupting our social cohesion: disinformation, infiltration, United Front tactics, et cetera. And that is why we also feel strongly that we need to step up to better defend and protect our society, and at the same time build greater unity,' she said. Asked about international concerns over the fighting, she said it was a challenge, but: 'Is there any democracy that doesn't have deep political divisions?' No analyst or politician the Guardian spoke to for this story dared to predict an outcome. Nachman says he has never seen Taiwan more divided. 'That wound needs to be addressed, regardless of who wins in the end.' Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu and Lillian Yang
New Straits Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- New Straits Times
China rallies for opposition as Taiwan prepares mass parliamentary recall
AS Taiwan gears up for a recall vote that could reshape its parliament, opposition lawmakers being challenged at the ballot box are getting two unusual supporters: Chinese officials and state media outlets rallying to their cause. While President Lai Ching-te won the election last year, his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its legislative majority. The opposition has flexed its muscles since then to pass laws the government has opposed and impose budget cuts, complicating efforts to boost defence spending in particular. The political drama has been happening against a backdrop of China ramping up its own military and diplomatic pressure campaign against Taiwan to assert territorial claims Lai and his government resolutely reject. Lai has offered talks with Beijing many times, but been rebuffed. Civic groups formally started the recall campaign earlier this year, and on Saturday voters will decide on the fate of 24 lawmakers from Taiwan's largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), around one-fifth of all lawmakers. The recall groups say theirs is an "anti-communist" movement, accusing the KMT of selling out Taiwan by sending lawmakers to China, not supporting defence spending, and bringing chaos to parliament. The KMT rejects those accusations, denouncing Lai's "dictatorship" and "green terror" - the DPP's party colour. China has not sat quietly on the sidelines, to the KMT's unease, ever wary of being "painted red" by its opponents. In June, two senior Chinese officials overseeing Taiwan policy denounced the recalls as a "political scheme" of Lai's. Lai is "engaging in dictatorship under the guise of democracy" and "using every means possible to suppress the opposition," China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian told a news briefing in June. Taiwanese tycoon Robert Tsao, one of the most prominent recall campaigners, said such comments would only support their cause. "It shows they (the KMT) are together with the communist party. It helps us," he told reporters at a campaign event on Monday. The KMT says it neither asked for nor wants China's support, can't control what China says, and that it is not pro-Beijing. "We feel the same way as all the people of Taiwan - this is our business. It is the two parties, the DPP and the KMT, fighting for public support, for public recognition. It has nothing to do with the mainland," party spokesperson Crystal Yang told Reuters. Chinese state media outlets and their affiliated social media accounts published some 425 articles or videos describing the recall campaign as "dictatorship" or "green terror" in the first half of 2025, according to Taiwan research organisation IORG, which analyses Chinese state media. In an April commentary, China's ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said Lai was "presumptuously abusing the recall system to crack down on the opposition party, attempting to establish a 'green dictatorship.'" Pointing to the similarity between China and the KMT's arguments against the recalls, Wu Szu-yao, secretary general of the DPP's legislative caucus, said Beijing is "offering ammunition" to the KMT to sway voters. "China is really concerned that the mass recall will be successful and win the support of Taiwan's public," she said. China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment. The KMT says its China engagement is vital given Beijing's refusal to talk to Lai, who it says is a "separatist", and to advocate for Taiwan's interests, such as promoting agricultural exports. "This is an unfair criticism," Tony Lin, chair of the KMT's Culture and Communication Committee, said, referring to the accusations they are pro-Beijing. "What we have always stressed is that we are pro-communication." The KMT hopes people will turn out to also express their dissatisfaction with Lai, whom they say is incompetent and has stoked tensions with China. "The DPP uses its overwhelming propaganda network to bring up a sense of fear (about China) in Taiwan society," said Huang Kwei-bo, a professor of diplomacy at Taipei's National Chengchi University and a former KMT deputy secretary general.
AsiaOne
2 days ago
- Politics
- AsiaOne
China rallies for opposition as Taiwan gears up for mass parliamentary recall, China News
TAIPEI — As Taiwan gears up for a recall vote that could reshape its parliament, opposition lawmakers being challenged at the ballot box are getting two unusual supporters: Chinese officials and state media outlets rallying to their cause. While President Lai Ching-te won the election last year, his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its legislative majority. The opposition has flexed its muscles since then to pass laws the government has opposed and impose budget cuts, complicating efforts to boost defence spending in particular. The political drama has been happening against a backdrop of China ramping up its own military and diplomatic pressure campaign against Taiwan to assert territorial claims Lai and his government resolutely reject. Lai has offered talks with Beijing many times, but been rebuffed. Civic groups formally started the recall campaign earlier this year, and on Saturday voters will decide on the fate of 24 lawmakers from Taiwan's largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), around one-fifth of all lawmakers. The recall groups say theirs is an "anti-communist" movement, accusing the KMT of selling out Taiwan by sending lawmakers to China, not supporting defence spending, and bringing chaos to parliament. The KMT rejects those accusations, denouncing Lai's "dictatorship" and "green terror" — the DPP's party colour. China has not sat quietly on the sidelines, to the KMT's unease, ever wary of being "painted red" by its opponents. In June, two senior Chinese officials overseeing Taiwan policy denounced the recalls as a "political scheme" of Lai's. Lai is "engaging in dictatorship under the guise of democracy" and "using every means possible to suppress the opposition", China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian told a news briefing in June. Taiwanese tycoon Robert Tsao, one of the most prominent recall campaigners, said such comments would only support their cause. "It shows they (the KMT) are together with the communist party. It helps us," he told reporters at a campaign event on Monday. 'Our business' The KMT says it neither asked for nor wants China's support, can't control what China says, and that it is not pro-Beijing. "We feel the same way as all the people of Taiwan — this is our business. It is the two parties, the DPP and the KMT, fighting for public support, for public recognition. It has nothing to do with the mainland," party spokesperson Crystal Yang told Reuters. Chinese state media outlets and their affiliated social media accounts published some 425 articles or videos describing the recall campaign as "dictatorship" or "green terror" in the first half of 2025, according to Taiwan research organisation IORG, which analyses Chinese state media. In an April commentary, China's ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said Lai was "presumptuously abusing the recall system to crack down on the opposition party, attempting to establish a 'green dictatorship'". Pointing to the similarity between China and the KMT's arguments against the recalls, Wu Szu-yao, secretary general of the DPP's legislative caucus, said Beijing is "offering ammunition" to the KMT to sway voters. "China is really concerned that the mass recall will be successful and win the support of Taiwan's public," she said. China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment. The KMT says its China engagement is vital given Beijing's refusal to talk to Lai, who it says is a "separatist", and to advocate for Taiwan's interests, such as promoting agricultural exports. "This is an unfair criticism," Tony Lin, chair of the KMT's Culture and Communication Committee, said, referring to the accusations they are pro-Beijing. "What we have always stressed is that we are pro-communication." The KMT hopes people will turn out to also express their dissatisfaction with Lai, whom they say is incompetent and has stoked tensions with China. "The DPP uses its overwhelming propaganda network to bring up a sense of fear (about China) in Taiwan society," said Huang Kwei-bo, a professor of diplomacy at Taipei's National Chengchi University and a former KMT deputy secretary general. [[nid:715095]]
