The Kuomintang's real crisis

It's premature. For one thing, Chai of FAPA (Formosan Association for Public Affairs) fame must have misinterpreted an additional article of the Constitution, which is an equivalent of a constitutional amendment in the United States. Incidentally, FAPA is Taiwan's independence lobby in the United States. The article reads in part: “Recall of the president or the vice president shall be initiated upon the proposal of one-fourth of all members of the Legislative Yuan, and also passed by two-thirds of all the members. The final recall must be passed by more than one-half of the valid ballots in a vote in which more than one-half of the electorate in the free area of the Republic of China (Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu) takes part.”

Constitutionally, the membership of the Legislative Yuan totals 113, of which the minimum number of seats to reach one-fourth quorum is 29. But Chai saw that the opposition party's 28 seats make up one-fourth of the current membership, which is 112 after the resignation of Legislator Wu Den-yih, who has become president of the Executive Yuan or premier. In other words, Chai is positive that now, even before another member of the legislature is elected and sworn in, his party has the one-fourth quorum necessary to initiate President Ma's recall. No date has been fixed yet for the by-election in Nantou to fill the seat vacated by Premier Wu.

Wang Jin-pyng, president of the Legislative Yuan, was led to believe Chai was right immediately after Liu's landslide victory, which got his Kuomintang reeling in disarray. He said the opposition party might initiate, “but it has a long way to go even to make the proposal adopted.” The Kuomintang, even with the by-election in Yunlin lost, still controls a larger-than-two-thirds majority in the Legislative Yuan. He later corrected himself and pointed out the one fourth is 29 seats.

But the real purpose of the opposition party is to embarrass President Ma, not to recall him. All Chai and other party leaders want is to put a recall motion on the record to get even with Ma Ying-jeou. As Kuomintang chairman, Ma initiated the recall of President Chen Shui-bian three times for corruption in 2006. None of the attempts were successful, for the Kuomintang and its allies could not muster a two-thirds majority vote in parliament.

That is why Ker Chien-ming, the minority leader before Chai, has made it clear that his party wants to initiate the recall “at an opportune time,” meaning after the legislative by-election in Nantou is won.

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