Update: Yep, I didn't think to check the predictive text on his name. Fixed now.
Since I'm just not feeling it today, I'll let someone else -- probably Frozen Garlic -- do the numbers properly. But, from a quick look, it seems that while turnout would have been enough to unseat Chen under the old recall system (it just about topped 50%, which was the old turnout threshold), the signatures needed to recall him would not have been sufficient in the first place.
But the recall did happen, and he did lose his seat, and I have thoughts.
Did the activists pushing for the relaxation of recall procedures know the opposition would use it against them, or did they unwittingly provide the weapon of their own defeat?
From everything I know, it's the former. The groups that pushed for recall reform are not made up of unintelligent people incapable of forethought. Of course they were aware that the KMT would use it against them. So either they thought the KMT's days as a popular party capable of successfully unseating opposition lawmakers were numbered if not over, or they believed so singularly and purely in the fundamental correctness of changing the regulations for the betterment of society that they were willing to face the future obstacles they put in their own way.
Think Socrates and the hemlock -- the elementary-school history version of it, anyway.
Yes, the old thresholds (13% of eligible voter signatures to get a vote, over 50% turnout on that vote) were high, and yes, the Republic of China guarantees citizens the right to recall elections -- it was part of Sun Yat-sen's original philosophy and is enshrined in the constitution. Yes, reform would not have been a bad thing. But did the new ones really need to be so low? Frozen Garlic thinks not, and I agree. The pan-greens and left did not need to stake so much on those specific new rules. Certainly, there's nothing ethically or morally "better" about the current 10% of voters needed to sign a petition and 25% of voters needed to actually recall.
While the pan-blue forces -- and all their patronage networks/gangster friends/local factionistas -- have had a spotty record on actually recalling people, they've also been the only ones trying. Typically, they've targeted not DPP legislators but people from minor parties, succeeding about half them time. Huang Kuo-chang (NPP) and Huang Chieh (now former NPP) survived, Wang Hao-yu (Green Party until just before the recall, then switched to the DPP, which didn't save him) and now Chen did not.
On the other side, you could say that the pan-greens are trying to use the recall responsibly: they've only turned it on Han Kuo-yu. But Han had dug his own grave: I'm speculating here, but Han probably would have lost re-election on his own. Recalling him saved Kaohsiung from bad governance -- he was pretty clearly not doing his job -- and had a morale-boosting effect for the pan-greens.
What does the KMT have to offer in Chen's place? More under-the-table politics, more geezers or sons-of-geezers, more gangster-affiliated factional crap in Taichung. More of the same. Nothing inspirational.
Perhaps the KMT thought this would be a galvanizing moment for them, the way Han's recall was for the pan-greens. But I doubt it: whoever takes Chen's place is going to be a local factional pol, not a nationally-popular figure. They may gain one seat in the legislature, but I don't see this as particularly beneficial for them simply because they have nothing to offer but more of the same. This is unlikely to have much positive effect beyond the actual seat they just opened up.
That it was an obvious revenge recall and not based on any unfitness or incompetence on Chen's part, however, will likely galvanize the exact people they are seeking to demoralize -- the pan-greens. They're pissed. They know what this is and they're gonna fight harder because of it.
The KMT tried to send the message that if you mess with them, they'll go after your most prominent figures, and sometimes succeed in taking them out.
The message they actually sent was "we're shitheads and you can't trust us to use the tools of democracy responsibly." Not on a local scale, perhaps. Not in that particular district -- but nationally.
I can only hope that by handing the KMT a potent weapon in recall reform, that the activists who pushed it through will ultimately benefit in an unlikely way: the KMT will use it so much, so viciously and so clearly without grounds or reason, that for every shot they fire at the pan-greens, whether they take someone out or not, they're also shooting themselves in the foot.