TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Political tensions are rising in Taiwan’s Keelung with multiple recall campaigns launched this week targeting public officials.
Public dissatisfaction spurred by a scandal surrounding property rights and business operations of the Keelung E-Square Mall resulted in a recall campaign against Kuomintang (KMT) Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) that was launched on Saturday (March 9), reported UDN.
Two days previous, the KMT office in Keelung initiated a recall campaign against Keelung City Council Speaker Tong Tzu-wei (童子瑋) and four other DPP city councilors who have been vocal in their criticism of the mayor’s handling of the shopping mall controversy. Some officials and pundits have suggested that Hsieh directed the KMT's recall campaign against the DPP officials in retaliation for their criticism and investigations into the E-Square Mall debacle, per LTN.
On Friday (March 8), a group called the Shanhai Citizen’s Movement to Take Down Liang (山海公民拆樑行動) initiated their planned campaign to recall Hsieh. The group organized two stations in Keelung to begin collecting signatures for the recall effort on Saturday.
The recall effort is being led by a 28-year-old healthcare worker named Tai Ching-an (戴璟安), who says she does not represent a political party and that the recall effort is not partisan. A spokesperson for the campaign, Lin Yin-yin (林茵茵), said the group is dissatisfied with Hsieh’s inaction and incompetence in Keelung’s municipal administration.
The campaigners, who began planning the recall in early February, accuse Hsieh of ignoring property rights and proper procedures regarding the operations of the Keelung E-Square Mall. The Keelung KMT chapter head, Wu Kuo-sheng (吳國勝) told reporters that the party responded to the planned recall effort targeting the mayor by preemptively initiating recall campaigns of their own against prominent DPP city officials.
The controversy around the Keelung E-Square Mall began brewing in January when the city government pressured the NET Fashion Development Company to give up its rights to commercial management of the property. There are allegations that rights to proprietorship of the mall were improperly transferred to the Breeze Group without due process, violating the terms of NET’s lease agreement.
On Feb. 1, Keelung police reportedly carried out a nighttime raid to expel NET from the mall, changing the locks to prevent re-entry and disposing of NET merchandise on the property.
While both the DPP city councilors and KMT officials have decried the recall efforts as retaliatory, the competing recall campaigns will likely only further enflame dissatisfaction with the Keelung government among the public.
