Opposition parties accuse President Lai and Premier Cho of violating Taiwan\u2019s constitution in impeachment bid.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Taiwan\u2019s opposition parties have moved forward with an impeachment campaign to remove President William Lai Ching-te and Premier Cho Jung-tai from office, in what observers say is the latest sign of deepening political polarisation within the self-ruled island.<\/p>\n The Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People\u2019s Party (TPP) began impeachment proceedings on Friday against President Lai and Premier Cho, who they accuse of violating the constitution and the legislative process.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Legislators with the KMT, TPP, and two independents had enough seats to initiate proceedings on Friday, but they are still short of the two-thirds majority of lawmakers needed to pass an impeachment vote scheduled for May 19.<\/p>\n Observers say that while the impeachment proceedings are unlikely to clear further hurdles in Taiwan\u2019s Constitutional Court, they offer the opposition a symbolic way to protest their displeasure at Lai\u2019s presidency and Cho\u2019s premiership.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not possible to have a real impeachment; however, they want to make a record that President Lai would be the first president considered impeached in the history of Taiwan\u2019s democracy,\u201d said Yen-tu Su, an expert in constitutional law and democratic theory at Academia Sinica, Taiwan\u2019s top research institution.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a way to register their protest. It\u2019s a way to humiliate the president, and also a way to retaliate against the executive branch refusal to promulgate legislation passed by the legislators,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s legislature has been largely in deadlock since Lai took office in 2024 amid a divided government.<\/p>\n Though Lai led his centre-left Democratic Progressive Party to an unprecedented third consecutive term in the presidential office last year, his party has since lost its majority in the legislature, and political deadlock has taken hold.<\/p>\n Political parties have been locked in legislative fights over everything from the budget to Taiwan\u2019s relationship with China, and the makeup of the island\u2019s constitutional court \u2013 whose work has been frozen for much of the past year due to the infighting.<\/p>\n Lai\u2019s government is still struggling to pass sections of the 2026 budget, while the KMT has also blocked the president\u2019s much-publicised supplemental $40bn bill to boost Taiwan\u2019s defence spending.<\/p>\n For his part, Cho earlier this month vetoed a bill that would have made it easier to allocate tax revenues between Taiwan\u2019s local and central government, arguing that the plan was not feasible.<\/p>\n Brian Hioe, a frequent commentator on Taiwanese politics and a non-resident fellow at the University of Nottingham\u2019s Taiwan Research Hub, told Al Jazeera that he also thought the impeachment campaign was more of a symbolic gesture than a practical move.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s just a stunt so that they\u2019ll get attention,\u201d Hioe said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut they also just want to paint [Lai] as infringing upon democratic institutions in a way that is beyond the pale,\u201d he said, adding that the impeachment campaign was likely to appeal to core KMT and TPP supporters rather than swing voters.<\/p>\n Academia Sinica\u2019s Su told Al Jazeera that the impeachment fight was a sign of much more profound problems within Taiwan\u2019s political system.<\/p>\n \u201cTaiwan just entered its second period of divided government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did have a prior experience with a divided government [from 2000 to 2008], but this time things are much uglier, and much more difficult due to partisan polarisation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Opposition parties accuse President Lai and Premier Cho of violating Taiwan\u2019s constitution in impeachment bid. Taiwan\u2019s opposition parties have moved forward with an impeachment campaign to remove President William Lai Ching-te and Premier Cho Jung-tai from office, in what observers say is the latest sign of deepening political polarisation within the self-ruled island. The Kuomintang […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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