After many months of campaigning, Taiwan’s “Great Recall” came to a halt on Saturday with the unexpected defeat of recall efforts at the polls. Of 24 Kuomintang (KMT) legislators and one mayor up for recall, no recall vote was successful, despite predictions ahead of time from experts and political parties that 10 legislators could potentially be recalled. Even Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao, who faces removal from office on corruption charges, was not recalled.
Though a second wave of recall votes will take place in late August, it will be smaller, involving just seven legislators. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would need to pick up six seats to change the balance of power in the legislature – which would require not only voting out KMT legislators but winning by-elections to replace them with DPP politicians. As such, it is unlikely this second wave of voting will succeed in changing the balance of power in the legislature, particularly with the loss of momentum following the defeat on Saturday.
Taiwan’s Great Recall was a reaction to KMT maneuvers in the legislature in the past two years. Last year, efforts by the KMT to drastically expand legislative powers sparked pushback in the form of the Bluebird Movement, the largest social movement to emerge in the decade since the 2014 Sunflower Movement. Critics saw the expanded legislative powers as KMT overreach, as well as potentially dangerous to national security. At the time, KMT legislators faced allegations of leaking the details of Taiwan’s domestic submarine program, which raised concerns that the new legislative powers could be used to force military officials to disclose state secrets.
This year, the KMT again sparked pushback by pushing the largest set of budget cuts in Taiwanese history. Though the KMT claimed that this was necessary for fiscal balance, the public was alarmed by the reduction in the defense budget at a time when the United States has increasingly called on Taiwan to increase military spending or potentially face a loss of support. Then, with the Constitutional Court having struck down the legislative powers sought by the KMT last year, the KMT passed legislation mandating a minimum number of justices for the court to be able to make rulings, then refused to confirm any nominations of the Lai administration, effectively preventing a quorum from ever being reached.
The Great Recall was a form of political protest again these moves. It was on par with the other large-scale social movements that have taken place in Taiwan in the past decade – except directed primarily toward electoral ends. As with other movements in the last decade, the Great Recall was largely driven by youth participation. A number of creative initiatives flourished, including websites built to gather information about legislators and make it easier to fill out forms for recall petitions, dozens of promotional films created by a team of directors, and other endeavors.
Yet the Great Recall also distinguished itself with participation from older pan-Blue voters, who were mostly veterans. Terming themselves the “True Blue Army,” the veterans criticized the contemporary KMT as having drifted away from its traditional stances and toward rapprochement with China. While past social movements, such as the Sunflower Movement, had seen notable participation from waishengren – those descended from KMT followers who decamped to Taiwan following the Chinese Civil War – these were mostly young people, rather than older voters.
During the recall campaign, the KMT was usually framed as undermining Taiwan’s democracy at China’s behest. KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi was singled out as the mastermind of the KMT’s legislative offensives in past years.
The Great Recall proved increasingly reminiscent of an election, with voters called on to return from overseas and cast ballots. Reportedly, the Chinese government discounted flights by 40 percent in hopes that Taiwanese living in China would return to Taiwan to vote. By contrast, civil groups mobilized among overseas Taiwanese, gathering in the days before the vote at Taoyuan International Airport to welcome returning voters. Pro-recall groups, the DPP, and the KMT all held rallies to drive up turnout in the days before the vote. In spite of heavy rain in some parts of Taiwan, the recall votes notched 56.22 percent turnout.
However, in the end the Great Recall was not successful in reaching across the aisle to sway voters against the KMT. Because the recalls targeted KMT legislators, the voting took place in districts that traditionally slant pan-Blue. In these historically KMT-friendly districts, members of the public were not persuaded to vote out their representatives. Even key targets of the recalls, such as Fu, survived, despite the DPP deploying 20 percent of its central party staff to Fu’s constituency of Hualien in an attempt to sway voters.
As this was not a presidential election year and because there were no head-to-head election battles, the dynamics for the recall were different than with an election. It is also being debated whether the recalls would have fared better if the DPP had taken more of a proactive role in organizing the recalls. The recall campaigns were primarily headed by self-organized volunteer groups.
In the course of the months of recall campaigning, the KMT was unable to organize its own recalls against the DPP. Apparently unable to collect sufficient signatures, KMT local chapter heads increasingly found themselves in trouble with the law through signature fraud, accused of copying signatures from party rolls – including from deceased persons – for recall petitions. This raised questions about whether the KMT’s historically powerful party machine had weakened to an extent that might allow the DPP to sway the legislature.
The KMT historically was able to maintain power through its extensive clientelist and patronage networks during the authoritarian period. Consequently, the DPP has struggled to make inroads into local politics. While the DPP is able to win presidential elections – and has done so for three consecutive terms – the DPP has only controlled the legislature for two terms, from 2016 to 2024. That marked the only time a non-KMT party has controlled Taiwan’s legislature.
But even if some experts question whether the KMT’s powerful party machine of the past no longer exists, it was able to turn out enough voters to defeat the recalls. Turnout was notably high in the recall votes, meaning most votes meet the benchmarks to be binding, but more voters opposed the recalls than supported them.
After the failure of the recalls, what comes next for Taiwanese politics?
The KMT has largely avoided controversial initiatives such as those that stoked the Great Recall in past months. But, with its victory at the polls, the KMT may return to actions aimed at expanding legislative power – the only branch of government the KMT controls – and curtailing the power of other branches of government.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in spite of the risk of outraging the public, the KMT blocked all seven of the Lai administration’s proposed Constitutional Court nominees in the week prior to the recall vote. The KMT clearly intends to keep the court frozen.
The budget debacle earlier this year can be understood as a fight between the legislature and executive branches of government about who controls the power of the purse. The KMT-controlled legislative may continue to try and shift other powers to legislative authority. Other powers sought by the KMT in the past year include security powers that belong to the executive branch, the authority to designate restricted waters, media regulation, and investigation of political wrongdoing.
With the KMT’s successes in the recall, the political stars of Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an and Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen are on the rise, with both given credit for the survival of KMT legislators in their respective constituencies. KMT party chair Eric Chu has suggested that he might step aside in favor of Lu, while both Chiang and Lu are expected to seek the KMT’s 2028 presidential nomination.
Though the DPP was not the organizer of the Great Recall, the KMT framed the movement as DPP-orchestrated and a means of undermining democratic institutions. Pan-Blue political figures like bodybuilder and influencer Holger Chen compared the DPP to Nazis at the KMT’s final election rallies. Furthermore, the KMT is likely to frame the outcome as a rebuke to the Lai administration, particularly regarding its efforts to strengthen securitization in Taiwanese society given rising threats from China.
The recall results are not necessarily a response to Lai’s overall agenda. It may be that the electorate as a whole was simply not inclined to oust incumbents in the course of the recalls. But the KMT may leverage its victory in the Great Recall to try and constrain Lai. It is also to be seen if there is any shake-up in the DPP, with party caucus leader Ker Chien-ming perhaps held responsible for having pushed the party to embrace the recalls.
