Taiwanese voters overwhelmingly rejected an unprecedented Saturday recall effort targeting the opposition Kuomintang Party, which favors better relations with China.
Voters in every targeted constituency voted against recalling the KMT lawmakers, Central Election Commission data found, a striking rejection of the effort boosted by President Lai Ching-te’s Democratic Progressive Party. The attempt aimed to recall 24 KMT lawmakers, almost a quarter of the legislature, and the KMT mayor of Hsinchu. The recall effort was launched by civil society groups, which argued that the party was working with China and jeopardizing national security. Voters weren’t convinced.
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“We all know that no one should overturn the table and demand a new election just because they lost,” KMT Chairman Eric Chu told reporters on Saturday. “You can’t lose an election and then launch a massive recall. You can’t seek one-party dominance at the cost of undermining democracy.”
Worse yet for the DPP, the recall effort was rejected overwhelmingly in every district. The percentage of pro-recall votes only exceeded 25% in six out of the 25 elections.
DPP Secretary-General Lin Yu-chang acknowledged the humiliation, saying the party would learn from the vote and seek to respond to the public’s wishes. He also repeated claims that Beijing had been interfering in Taiwanese affairs.
“This unprecedented civic movement was motivated by anti-communism and the need to protect Taiwan,” he said.
The DPP only needed 12 KMT lawmakers to be recalled to secure a majority in the legislature. With every effort failing, the KMT and its allies maintain their majority, impeding the president’s ability to enact his agenda. The DPP lost its legislative majority in January 2024.
The KMT ruled mainland China until its ousting by Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1948. The party, led by Chiang Kai-shek, retreated to Taiwan, where they ruled it as a one-party state until democratization in the 1980s and 1990s.
Despite the KMT’s longstanding rivalry with the People’s Republic of China, harboring aims to reconquer the mainland as late as the 1970s, the modern KMT now favors closer relations with Beijing. Its friendly approach to Beijing has drawn criticism from the anti-Beijing DPP and many Taiwanese nationalists, who believe Beijing is using the party to sow discord and assert control over the island nation.
The KMT views Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China, as the sole legitimate heir of the prerevolutionary Chinese government. It recognizes both Taiwan and the mainland as “one China” but rejects any attempts to reconcile the two sides of the strait under Communist Party rule.
The DPP, by contrast, views Taiwan as already independent of the mainland. It rejects the idea of continuity from prerevolutionary China and views Taiwanese sovereignty as solely derived from the sovereign will of the people.
Chang Chun-hao, a professor from the Department of Political Science of Tunghai University, told Bloomberg that the electoral route signals that the DPP’s strategy of relying on anti-China rhetoric has its shortfalls, and that the party should adapt.
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“The DPP must recognize that it cannot rely on anti-China messaging in every election, as voters may be more concerned with economic and livelihood issues,” he said.
Taiwan forms an integral part of the global semiconductor supply chain, with most of the world’s computing power relying on a single factory on the island nation. This importance is recognized by Washington, which treads a thin line between supporting Taipei’s sovereignty and seeking to avoid provoking the wrath of Beijing, which holds that the island is rightful Chinese territory.