Taiwan's leading opposition party Kuomintang (KMT) on Monday launched their third attempt to pass a motion aimed at ousting Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian from power.

The "Legislative Yuan", the Taiwan legislature, is expected to hold a vote in response to the motion on Nov. 24.

The People First Party (PFP), another major opposition party, has expressed its support for the motion. The KMT and the PFP urged the Taiwan Solidarity Union and legislators from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to back the recall motion.

The Taiwan Solidarity Union, a political party with 12 legislators, announced last Friday it would support the third recall motion when prosecutors decided to indict Chen's wife, Wu Shu-chen, on charges of graft and forgery of documents in a case involving 14.8 million New Taiwan dollars (448,500 U.S. dollars).

However, on Monday, the party began to waver, saying they couldn't make decisions before they knew public opinion.

In the last vote, 116 legislators voted in favour of the motion, well short of the required approval of two-thirds of Taiwan's 220 legislators - 147 votes. For the motion to succeed, the opposition will have to amass support from members of the DPP.

Chen has already survived two leadership challenges, in June and October of this year, as the legislators from the ruling DPP have boycotted the vote on both occasions.

Source: Xinhua