Taipei high court rejects Kaohsiung mayor's request to stop recall election

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/04/17
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taipei High Administrative Court on Friday rejected Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu's (韓國瑜) request to halt a planned vote to have him recalled as mayor.

After a heated two-and-a-half-hour verbal exchange among the lawyers for Chen Kuan-jung (陳冠榮), the founder of the recall movement, Han's attorneys, and the Central Election Commission (CEC), the high court on Friday rejected the mayor's request to suspend the recall election, reported NOWnews. However, Han has the right to appeal the decision.

In the second stage of the petition to recall Han, launched by We Care Kaohsiung (Wecare高雄) among other groups, 400,000 joint signatures were collected. After eliminating duplicates, data errors, and suspected forgeries, 377,662 effective signatures were collected, still far exceeding the minimum threshold of 230,000.

Therefore, the Kaohsiung Election Commission determined that the petition had met the requirements, and the recall vote is expected in mid-June pending final approval by the Central Election Commission (CEC) on April 17.    [FULL  STO-RY]