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Ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members have warned Taiwanese people to be on the lookout for attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to sabotage the recall effort against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers.
According to a report by the Taipei Times, the KMT filed a recall petition for one DPP lawmaker, and earlier this week, campaign groups submitted 20 recall vote proposals for 19 KMT lawmakers to the Central Election Commission (CEC). Among the campaigners are YouTuber Pa Chiung and Robert Tsao, the founder of United Microelectronics Corp, who have both claimed that KMT politicians were conspiring with the CCP to weaken the DPP in the legislature. Last year, the Mainland Affairs Council compiled a list of the CCP's election-meddling tactics and schemes, such as allocating funds to support preferred candidates, providing local voters and "vote brokers" with all-expense-paid trips to China, and offering financial incentives to polling companies and news organizations that support its "unified front" propaganda as reported by Taipei Times. "The blue and white political camps have a majority in the Legislative Yuan. We have seen that this past year, the CCP made paralyzing the central government from functioning its priority task. If the recall movement can overturn this situation, it would deal a heavy blow to the CCP," Taipei Times quoted DPP legislator Lai Jui-lung as saying. Lai made the remarks in response to questions on whether China would meddle in the recall movement. He said, "Using democracy to subvert democracy is the least expensive and simplest way to achieve this aim. It would ensure that they and these parties can still control the Legislative Yuan." "We ask people to take caution and be prudent when facing such situations," Taipei Times quoted him as saying. Rosalia Wu, the chief executive of the DPP caucus, claimed that China had meddled in Taiwan's elections using non-democratic tactics. "That is well known to most of us. We have seen the many ploys and schemes the CCP used to meddle with our legislative and other national elections in past years," she said. "We can liken the current ongoing process, which would culminate in a recall vote later this year, to a large-scale election," Taipei Times quoted her as saying. She claimed that CCP has been supporting a certain political party for a long time and plans to meddle in the recall would not subside but increase further. According to Taipei Times, Rosalia Wu said, "We know the CCP has for a long time been supporting a certain political party, so their intention and plans to meddle in the recall would not subside, but would instead escalate further to reach into our society, people must have awareness and be on guard against these ploys." (ANI)
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