Recall tsunami: How Taiwan’s KMT faces its biggest crisis in years

According to Taiwan’s political calendar, 2025 was expected to be a relatively quiet year, falling between the presidential and legislative elections of 2024 and the municipal elections of 2026. However, this coming summer is set to witness an unprecedented wave of recall votes targeting 30 or more Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers.

As of 9 May, 29 recall initiatives have successfully gathered the required voter signatures — 10% of the electorate in each district — and submitted to the electoral authorities. The authorities are now verifying the authenticity of these endorsements before proceeding with the voting process.

For the opposition Kuomintang, this large-scale recall campaign looms like an imminent tsunami: nearly all 36 of its district legislators are facing significant voter backlash and risk losing their seats.

This grassroots challenge to KMT lawmakers was formally launched in January of this year, as the law prohibits recall efforts within the first year of an elected official’s term. However, its origins could be traced back to the Bluebird Movement of May and June 2024, when thousands of protesters gathered several times to oppose attempts by the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to force through a series of controversial bills.

In the winter, the opposition parties again leveraged their legislative majority to push for major budget cuts and freezes, moves widely seen as efforts to cripple the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government. One notable episode illustrates how these tactics inadvertently sparked public backlash: after threatening to defund the state-owned Public Television Service, a KMT lawmaker publicly insulted petitioning cultural workers, calling them “beggars”. In response, a group of film directors volunteered to produce 15 short videos in support of the recall campaign.

Initially, few expected the recall campaign to gain such nationwide momentum. Many KMT lawmakers were deeply entrenched in their districts, with some serving as many as eight terms. At most, these citizen-led efforts were thought to pose a threat only to KMT incumbents in swing districts or those who had won due to splits within the DPP-led green camp.

Yet by mid-March, 35 recall initiatives had passed the first-stage threshold — gathering signatures from at least 1% of the electorate — suggesting that virtually no KMT lawmaker was immune to voter backlash. It was at this point that the DPP decided to intervene. Lai Ching-te directed the party to support local recall groups. The impact of DPP mobilisation has been difficult to assess: while some DPP politicians became enthusiastic participants, others appeared to remain on the sidelines or engage only minimally.

The DPP’s endorsement of the recall campaign certainly raised political eyebrows — especially as some freshly defeated party politicians appeared to be settling personal scores. Then, when the Trump administration imposed reciprocal tariffs globally, Taiwan was hit with a staggering 32% rate on 2 April, prompting the DPP to abruptly cancel its planned spring-break mass rallies.

The opposition wasted no time criticising the ruling party for mishandling US relations and for its apparent overemphasis on recall politics. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the DPP was under mounting pressure from its own constituencies and from recall activists, who had grown frustrated with the party’s earlier wait-and-see stance.

Several high-profile missteps by KMT politicians only served to fuel the recall campaign. In early April, the KMT responded by sponsoring 12 recall initiatives against DPP lawmakers and councillors — and all passed the first-stage signature threshold.

However, it soon emerged that the campaign was riddled with fraud: a significant number of “endorsements” came from the deceased, clear evidence that KMT activists had forged signatures using existing voter lists. Taiwan’s prosecutors launched an investigation, questioning and detaining several party workers. In one egregious case, a Keelung City government director abused his access to household registration data to facilitate the recall effort.

The KMT denounced the prosecutions as a “witch-hunt”, and party leader Eric Chu went so far as to accuse the DPP of behaving like Nazis — an allegation that immediately drew outrage and protests from German, Israeli, and other European diplomats. Consequently, Taiwan’s recall politics have incidentally prompted responses abroad; however, the two geopolitical actors most influential to Taiwan — the US and the PRC — have yet to issue any official statements.

Inept responses from individual KMT lawmakers backfired, inadvertently creating celebrity champions for the recall campaign. A Mei, a professional YouTuber whose identity had been exposed by a KMT legislator at a press conference, responded by removing her mask — and her eloquence and wit quickly made her a sought-after speaker across Taiwan.

Likewise, Ye Chun-lian, a retired middle-school teacher from Hualien, was violently ejected when she accidentally wandered into a rally for the local KMT lawmaker. An award-winning educator celebrated for her lifelong dedication to her students, Ye’s mistreatment instantly captured national attention, elevating her into the well-known persona of the local recall effort.

Robert Tsao — the founding CEO of United Microelectronics Corporation, who briefly became a Singaporean citizen after the first DPP government (2000–2008) prosecuted his decision to invest in Chinese chip facilities — has also emerged as an unexpected leader in the recall campaign.

In recent years, Tsao regained Taiwanese nationality and established himself as a vocal critic of authoritarian China. He has framed the recall effort not as interparty warfare between the Green and Blue camps but as “defending Taiwan’s democracy against communism” (baotai fangong). This message has resonated even with some former KMT loyalists disillusioned by their party’s ingratiating stance toward Beijing.

Moreover, Tsao’s mainlander heritage has inspired retired servicemen to join forces with pro-independence activists — an indication that Taiwan’s political identities are undergoing a profound realignment. Prior to assuming the presidency, Lai characterised himself as a pragmatic advocate for Taiwan independence, and after taking office, he repeatedly vowed to defend the Republic of China. Lai’s embrace of the status quo may have made it easier for some KMT supporters to switch sides.

While it is still too early to predict the outcome of the recall elections or their political aftermath, the campaign has already reinvented political activism in Taiwan. Numerous women volunteers have set up street booths and canvassed neighbourhoods to collect signatures — often meeting hostility, and at times even violence, from KMT supporters. It remains to be seen how this emerging form of decentralised mobilisation will shape Taiwan’s democratic future. 

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