The Taiwanese political importance lasts as the party adapted to China survives the reminder vote: NPR

TAIPIEI, TAIWAN – Opposition legislators in Taiwan have survived an attempt to remind them of the island’s legislature and will therefore retain a majority parliamentary majority. The recall campaign for several months has not achieved its objective of unlocking the country’s democratic blockage.

The recall effort had opposed campaign groups to 24 opposition legislators who were accused of having undermined the national security of Taiwan and of being “pro-china”. The public voting process represented an unexplored territory for the Taiwanese policy, as it marked the first time that recall petitions were mobilized nationally.

The opposition parties have checked the Taiwan legislature since the beginning of 2024, when the general elections saw the main candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), William Lai, winning the presidency but the control of the Parliament.

The opposition parties have since hampered the Lai agenda, refusing to approve the judges of the Constitutional Court, the reduction of expenditure and the reduction of defense budgets.

“Their objective is to weaken Taiwan. They want to sabotage Taiwan from the interior,” said local reminder activist Mitch Yang, during a campaign event before the reminder of Saturday.

“They want to undermine the government so that at the end, the cost of the CCP to invade is lower,” he added, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

The vote coincided with Beijing’s efforts to increase its military and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan. China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan for decades and has never given up the possible use of force to annex the autonomous island and unify it with the Chinese continent.

The leaders of the largest opposition party, the KMT, insist that they are not pro-china and describe themselves rather as the only party which can engage in dialogue with Beijing, while maintaining deterrence and defense.

China is currently refusing to engage with President Lai, Chinese officials considering him as a separator and supporter of the current Taiwan status.

“We have to be smarter. And more intelligent means more dialogue deterrence,” said Alexander Huang, director of international affairs of the KMT, speaking in an opposition office in the center of Taipei. “We cannot afford to have zero communication, but a complete confrontation.”

The opposition also maintains that the budget cuts led by the KMT does not undermine national security, but are rather part of the government to explain so that Parliament does not become a simple “rubber stamp”.

“They would say that they play hard ball policy,” Nathan Batto, researcher at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica (IPSAS) told Taipei. “The problem is that they could have traveled,” said Batto – a suggestion that opposition actions have made the basic groups angry.

Since last year’s elections, the tensions of the legislative chamber have sometimes spread in the eyes of the public, while the fighting for political control has turned into physical altercations.

The fights on the floor of the Parliament have hospitalized several legislators.

The introduction by the opposition of controversial legislation in May 2024, which sought to increase parliamentary power over the president, also sparked a wave of demonstrations that closed the areas of the Taipei center and gave the growth of the recall movement.

The KMT claims that recall petitions are a political blow, orchestrated by the government to undermine the democratic process, the Stoke division and invalidate the results of last year’s elections.

“The massive recall against all KMT legislators elected only last year, is an act to cancel the elections,” Alexander Huang from KMT told NPR. “The Government of the DPP refuses to accept the result of the elections.”

And although they can be unconventional and unprecedented experts, experts suggest that petitions are not unconstitutional. “It is not a violation of democratic principles. The Constitution says that people have the right to remember,” Ipsas told NPR NPR.

But the organizers have faced a difficult battle from the start, contesting seats already held by the opposition.

“These are all votes in the districts that the KMT won in 2024. So they are all on lawn that is unfavorable to the DPP,” said Nathan Batto.

Activists also insisted that the pulse for reminders does not come from the DPP, which did not start supporting the recall process that some time after its beginning.

“We are not the main character here,” said DPP spokesperson Wu Cheng, NPR before surveys. “We support the movement of the” big reminder “, but it is not the work of our party.”

The KMT opposition currently holds 52 of the 113 seats in total of the Parliament and, with other opposition parties, it currently maintains a majority on the DPP in power 51.

“Once we have obtained a majority in Parliament, we can reset a lot of bad laws,” said Yang, the local recall activist, when he urged the residents of the Songshan district of Taipei to vote during a campaign event.

Nevertheless, the results dropped activists’ expectations and left the opposition groups embraced.

“The silent majority showed his voice,” said Luck Xu of the Foreign Department of Kmt after the result. “We call President Lai again: it’s really time to end the confrontation, it’s really time to sit and speak.”

In the coming weeks, voters will once again go to the polls for a second series of recall petitions, during which seven additional opposition legislators may lose their seats.

But if the results of Saturday provide an indication, analysts suggest that it is unlikely that the second cycle of the votes will allow the government to recover control of the Parliament.

The possibilities of withdrawing exhausted opposition legislators, President Lai will then probably be confronted with a parliament rooted with the opposition until the end of his mandate in 2028.

“Lai must find a way to reach out. I don’t think he can continue,” said Dafydd Fell, director of the Soas Center of Taiwan Studies. “Whether it is really taken in place is another matter.”