Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Eric Chu/Facebook
THE ONGOING WAVE of recalls against all KMT legislators has taken a strange turn, with proposals from some elements of the pan-Blue camp to dissolve the cabinet. If so, this would trigger a legal mechanism that would allow for the legislature to be dismissed and a new set of general elections to be held, if the Premier and the President of the Legislative Yuan agree on this.
With 30 KMT branches, offices, and residences searched and 6 KMT recall leaders questioned over the unusually high number of individuals whose signatures were listed on recall petitions through fraud, the KMT has leaned into the political narrative that the DPP is carrying out political persecution against its opponents. As such, the KMT demonstrated outside the Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday night into the early morning hours of Friday.
This demonstration saw participation by KMT heavyweights such as party chair Eric Chu, legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi, Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an, and Taoyuan mayor Simon Chang. This is one of the many ways in which the recall campaigns have led to dynamics similar to an election year, in that this is similar to an election rally.
Still, at the rally, Chiang surprised by calling for the dissolution of the cabinet. Since then, Chiang has continued to call for this proposal.
To this extent, in the days since, one has seen the idea embraced by pan-Blue media outlets such as the United Daily News. Clearly, the idea was not one simply thrown out there by Chiang, this goes to show that some elements of the pan-Blue camp hope to see not an ongoing series of recall campaigns but a new set of elections entirely.
The proposal does not make much sense for the KMT, which currently holds a slim majority in the legislature along with its ally, the TPP. Namely, while it appears as though about a dozen or so recall votes against KMT politicians will take place based on the current number of signatures collected by recall organizers, not only would KMT legislators need to be voted out, but the recall would need to hit a benchmark for participation to be binding.
Likewise, after the recall vote takes place, a new set of elections would have to take place. It is possible that this would simply result in a different KMT candidate being put in power. Consequently, a successful recall does not necessarily mean a pan-Green candidate being put in.
This, of course, would not be the case if a new set of elections were held. Given the institutional barriers that would be present in a recall but not in elections, it is often thought that the KMT would do worse in elections than it would in recalls.
KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi. Photo credit: Fu Kun-chi/Facebook
It is possible that the KMT is simply overconfident in itself, dramatically misunderstanding the wave of popular backlash against the KMT with the eruption of the Bluebird Movement last year–the largest social movement in Taiwan in ten years. More generally, the KMT’s actions–seeking to reshape government last year by seeking to arrogate powers to the legislature that normally belong to the executive and judiciary, then freezing the Constitutional Court and drastically cutting the government budget–act as though the KMT has a strong mandate that it does not have. If there is any strategy to the proposal, the KMT may believe that it would do well in a snap election, or that with the KMT unable to secure enough signatures to recall DPP legislators due to the apparent weakness of party branches, an election would allow for more resources to be diverted to party chapters for mobilization.
The KMT may have failed to be attentive to the fact that its majority in the legislature is tenuous and at least partially based on the design of the electoral system, rather than necessarily having won an outright majority. Though it is not as though the DPP is popular with the public, it is not for nothing that the DPP won an unprecedented third consecutive presidential term.
The DPP realizes the proposal is to their advantage. DPP legislative caucus leader Ker Chien-ming has tentatively backed the idea of dissolving the cabinet, criticizing the KMT for raising the idea and then dropping it. Apart from that the move can be framed as bipartisan by the DPP, in taking a step back from recalls, the KMT could also be pushed into the position of having to express approval of a cabinet they do not approve of in order to push them toward the notion.
By contrast, TPP party chair Huang Kuo-chang has called for presidential elections to take place again if the legislature is to be dissolved, arguing that Lai should step down in a new set of elections. Huang may be hoping to put the brakes on the idea of dissolving the legislature, particularly since the TPP is likely to lose seats in a new set of elections, seeing as the TPP’s current legislators were all voted in on the basis of the proportional representation–the so-called party vote. The TPP’s failure to distinguish its political brand from that of the KMT and the jailing of its leader, Ko Wen-je, further weaken the TPP’s staying power.
Strange times are ahead, then, for the recalls. It is to be seen what direction political discourse turns in next, but it may be that it is not merely that the recalls have the dynamics of an election year–it may be that we unexpectedly find ourselves in an election year.