Political analyst Courtney Donovan Smith explains how the Bluebird Protests led to the formation of civic groups that propelled Taiwan's mass recall movement.
00:00Talk about the origins of those civic groups and where they came from.
00:03Well, they came from, they started out from what was called the Bluebird Movement.
00:09And this is when thousands of people for many nights running came out in protest of the opposition-controlled legislature
00:18for several legislative moves that they made, including trying to expand the power of the legislative branch
00:25to take functions, for example, allotted to the judiciary and also to extend its power and influence more over the executive branch.
00:35So these rallies and this movement led to and joined with other civic groups.
00:43They started thinking about, well, what can we do about this?
00:47So they started forming these recall campaigns, and the first ones started getting off the ground in December.
00:54Now, there were some individual people, for example, Ke Jemming, who's the head of the DPP caucus.
01:02He came out in early January supporting the recall movements.
01:07But the party itself kept its distance.
01:11My suspicion is that they were concerned that this would look like they were trying to overturn democracy.
01:16And so the party was very slow to back these movements, very much in contrast to the KMT, but theirs were in response to these recalls.
01:28Now, eventually, as it became clear that they were picking up a lot of momentum,
01:35the DPP did start tacitly supporting them and then later on officially supporting them.
01:42But they have not taken leadership positions, but they've backed them logistically, such as ordering billboards and things like that.
01:50So why did none of the KMT campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers make it to the voting stage?
01:59Well, the momentum was definitely on the side of the recall campaigners who came out of a social movement.
02:05So when you came out of a social movement like the Bluebird movement, you've already got an organizational spirit.
02:11You have strong bonds between the people who've participated.
02:15And, you know, they already have this camaraderie.
02:18And so they went into it.
02:20They also started much earlier, which really helped.
02:24They were also backed by Robert Zowell, the founder of UMC.
02:28So they also had better resources.
02:30Now, the KMT, in response to these, started trying to launch their own.
02:36But they did not have that momentum.
02:38They did not have that cohesion.
02:40And you can't organize a campaign based on party members only.
02:45And so as they lost momentum, there were allegations that a lot of them were copying, for example, party membership role information and committing voter fraud by forging signatures.
02:57Now, not all of these people have been found guilty by any means, but there have been some confessions.
03:03So at least some cases were accurate.
03:07But none of them, but once, you know, once these investigations started, what volunteers they did have to help canvas for the signatures to meet the thresholds, they evaporated.
