BEIJING: The second round of a recall vote against seven legislators of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) party on the island of Taiwan failed on Saturday, with none of the recall proposals being passed. The crushing defeat of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in both rounds of voting underscores local residents’ disdain for the party’s political abuse and its excessive focus on political maneuvering at the expense of addressing crucial livelihood issues, said experts from across the Straits.
The voting took place from 8 am to 4 pm on Saturday across the island. Ballot counting revealed that the “no” votes prominently outnumbered the “yes” votes, marking another sweeping victory for the KMT against the recall campaign, per the Xinhua News Agency.
After two rounds of voting in vain, the DPP still remains a minority party in the island’s legislature, holding 51 seats out of 113.
It is believed the DPP authorities plotted the recall campaign against KMT legislators in an attempt to turn around its minority in the legislature. The first recall vote was held on July 26, which also suffered a significant defeat, Xinhua reported.
Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Sunday that the results of the second recall targeting legislators of the KMT party in Taiwan shows that “Taiwan independence” separatism clearly runs against the will of the people and is doomed to fail.
“Following the first round of voting on July 26, the people of Taiwan have once again said ‘no’ to the DPP’s malicious political farce,” Zhu said.
An opinion piece titled “the public opinion against the recall is deafening” published by the island’s China Times said that “the mainstream public opinion has already cast a vote of no confidence in Lai’s government.”
Another Taiwan media outlet, Newtalk, titled its report “The Recall, Massive Overturn,” to cover the DPP’s defeat.
People expect the DPP government to improve the public’s livelihood and build the island instead of launching a recall campaign for political maneuvering, and the defeat shows Taiwan public’s detest and fatigue over DPP’s political farce, Chang Ya-chung, president of the Sun Yat-sen School in Taiwan and a member of the KMT, told the Global Times on Sunday, noting that the failure has dealt a huge blow to the image of the DPP and Lai.
–The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
