The Appendectomy Project

The Appendectomy Project (割闌尾計畫) was founded in late April 2014 in order to carry on the work started by Democracy Kuroshio (民主黑潮) in calling for recalls of KMT legislators, with Alex Tsai (蔡正元) being a particular target. The Appendectomy Project’s name comes from a pun on removing the “blue” aspect of the political spectrum from office, as in the pan-Blue camp, which sounds like “appendectomy” seeing as “blue” (藍) is a homonym for the first character of “appendix” (闌尾).

Photo credit: Appendectomy Project

Alex Tsai in particular would become a target of the campaign, given past incidents in which Tsai was accused of corruption, numerous statements by Tsai attacking student demonstrators, and an incident in which Tsai’s car drove for over 2 kilometers with an unfortunate anti-nuclear demonstrator on the windshield due to demonstrators attempting to prevent him from leaving the Legislative Yuan in late April. The Appendectomy Project also called for the lowering the high voting turnout needed for recall votes to take place, as product of the “birdcage referendum act.”

Photo credit: Appendectomy Project

The Appendectomy Project began a crowdfunding campaign on May 3rd, hoping to raise 50,000 NT, but reaching this goal within 25 minutes. With the overwhelming success of the campaign, the Appendectomy Project decided to cut short their crowdfunding from their initial timeframe of 30 days and end their campaign on noon of May 5th, raising a total of $11,739,086. The Appendectomy Project later ran into financial issues, however, with the Control Yuan informing the group that they had not been registered as a political group to receive funds and efforts to recall KMT legislators have not yet been successful.

Nevertheless, although the Appendectomy Project was unable to successfully recall Alex Tsai due to the vote not achieving the fifty percent voter turnout needed to recall him, the Appendectomy Project would be successful in lowering the threshold needed for recall votes to be held to 25% in November 2016.

Read More About Efforts Of The Sunflower Movement At Radical Democracy:

• What is “radical democracy” and how did the Sunflower Movement aim towards this?

• What were the People’s Assemblies during the Sunflower Movement?

• Read the report on the People’s Assemblies held during the Sunflower Movement

• What was the campaign to hold direct referendums in Taiwan?

• What was the civil society version of the Cross-Straits Oversight Bill and how did this involve civil society writing legislation?

• What was the influence on the Sunflower Movement from the Occupy Wall Street Movement?

• Read interviews with Appendectomy Project participants

Photo credit: Appendectomy Project/Facebook