On a steamy night deep in one of Taipei’s most conservative suburbs, a group of elderly neighbours are yelling at each other next to a garbage truck. They have just been handed a leaflet by a university student calling on them to recall – expel – their sitting legislator.

There are hundreds of these campaigners across Taiwan, targeting members of the Kuomintang (KMT) opposition who they accuse of being too pro-China. But this neighbourhood is deeply loyal to the party, and the campaigners are not welcome.

A woman shouts angrily: “Throw that leaflet away! … We are against the recall!”

The group of activists are pushing to overturn the balance of power in Taiwan’s government, just 18 months after the national election. They are using an extraordinary mechanism that allows civilians to vacate individual seats midterm, in a way it has never been used before.

The campaign’s success has taken everyone by surprise. More than 30 of Taiwan’s 113 legislators are facing recall – the highest number in Taiwan’s history. All of them come from the opposition KMT party.

The campaign has set off a political storm across Taiwan, with arrests, assaults, and accusations of authoritarianism and collaboration, fuelling the island’s already deep political divisions.

The first 24 recall votes will take place on Saturday, and another seven in August, at a cost equivalent to about £40m. If just six are expelled the party will lose its majority in parliament to the ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP).

Both sides say they are fighting for Taiwan’s democracy.

An existential fight

In the 2024 election Lai Ching-te and the DPP won the presidency but not the legislature, where the KMT and smaller Taiwan People’s party hold the majority. The two have spent much of the past year blocking bills and stalling constitutional court appointments, sparking brawls indside the legislature and mass protests outside, from where the recall movement was born.

The campaigners calling for the KMT recall are a collection of civic groups who have won the backing of the ruling DPP.

View image in fullscreen In April tens of thousands of opposition party supporters rallied in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. Photograph: Charlie Chu

What started as a protest against opposition obstructionism has become about the existential threat of China, where the ruling Communist party (CCP) plans to annex Taiwan. Campaigners claim the targeted legislators are too close to China and are undermining Taiwan’s national security, pointing to those who have visited Beijing and met with senior officials, and a raft of proposed China-related bills that they say will weaken Taiwan’s defences.

“Certainly a good number of these legislators have stated on the record their support for pro-Beijing policy, or at the least strong anti-DPP policy,” says Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Taiwan University.

“There’s a difference between anti-DPP and pro-Beijing, but from the recallers’ perspective these have become synonymous.”

The KMT denies the accusations against its MPs. The party officially opposes annexation by the CCP but argues the way to preserve peace is through friendlier ties with Beijing. Fu Kun-chi, a controversial senior KMT legislator up for recall, told Nikkei Asia it was in the spirit of “fostering mutual understanding” that he went to Beijing and met with Wang Huning, Xi Jinping’s chief adviser overseeing Taiwan relations. Critics said Fu was “selling out Taiwan”.

The KMT and its supporters see the recalls as a grab for power by people who can’t accept the legitimate election results. They are misusing Taiwan’s democratic processes to “suppress opposition voices”, a senior KMT official told a recent background briefing.

A scandal-filled campaign

The recall mechanism is a drawn-out process that first requires two rounds of signature collections in an electorate: 1% of voting residents and then a separate 10%. Once approved by electoral officials a date is set for the recall vote. At least 25% of voters must turn out, and a majority must agree to vacate the seat. If successful, a byelection with new candidates is held within three months, and the recalled legislator is banned from running again for seven years.

Thousands of campaigners have swarmed street corners, transit stations, and the designated garbage collection points where residents bring their trash to trucks each night – first chasing signatures and now lobbying for votes.

View image in fullscreen Supporters of the recall movement gather in Taipei. Photograph: Ann Wang/Reuters

The campaign battle between the two sides has been hostile, scandal-filled, and very public.

Retaliatory petitions against DPP seats by the KMT failed spectacularly. None were approved, and dozens of officials were arrested on accusations of faking signatures and using the names of dead residents to fill petitions.

In April the KMT party chief, Eric Chu, called Lai a “dictator” who is “more communist than the communists, more fascist than the fascists”. A KMT spokesman told the Guardian Chu’s comments were “a sharp critique of what he sees as the DPP’s growing authoritarian tendencies”.

In June Lai drew criticism of his own after he appeared to refer to opposition forces as “impurities” that needed to be “driven out”, in one of a planned 10 speeches designed to “unify the nation”. The Presidential office said the comments were taken out of context and his speech was “about using democracy to temper the power of national unity”. That same month Robert Tsao, a tech tycoon supporting the recall campaign, told Nikkei Asia that he wanted to “burn” down the entire KMT party, which he called a “Trojan horse” for Beijing.

On the ground, campaign workers have been doxed and assaulted in the streets – those working in Dazhi wore body cameras and were accompanied by a well-built volunteer as their security guard.

The cities and towns are plastered with billboards, while trucks loaded with LCD screens drive laps of the streets blaring accusations of treason and collaboration.

Tens of thousands of people have protested for and against the recall around Taiwan.

“These people were elected, and you’re wasting resources to try and turn them out,” said Patrick at a pro-opposition rally. “We need to keep the country running smoothly instead of constantly wasting money.”

In Dazhi, resident Sarah Li says pro-China legislators have to go. She says they are blinded by favourable treatment from Beijing and supporters – like most of her neighbours – are ignoring the current climate to stay loyal to their party.

View image in fullscreen A truck carrying LCD screens parked in central Taipei urges people to vote to expel opposition legislators. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

“They don’t care about people’s lives,” she says of the legislators. “They just want power, political power.”

It’s illegal to discuss polling this close to the vote, but observers, like Taiwan-based political commentator Courtney Donovan Smith, say that people in support of the recall are far more likely to actually go and vote.

“There’s more people against these recalls, but they’re not all that motivated,” he says.

Politics as usual or something worse?

Beijing is likely watching the chaos with some glee. Fomenting social division is a key part of its strategy, and right now local politics is doing the CCP’s job. Much of the saga has made its way into CCP propaganda seeking to undermine Taiwan’s government with state media reporting the campaign as “extremist” activity to “remove opposition voices”.

On Wednesday, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said it was “evident and clear” that the CCP was trying to interfere in Taiwan’s democratic process.

At a press briefing on Friday, Taiwan’s vice-president, Hsiao Bi-Khim, said the recalls were a constitutional civic right just like elections, and a sign of Taiwan’s “robust” democracy.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that China has been very proactive in trying to utilise hybrid means of disrupting our social cohesion: disinformation, infiltration, United Front tactics, et cetera. And that is why we also feel strongly that we need to step up to better defend and protect our society, and at the same time build greater unity,” she said.

Asked about international concerns over the fighting, she said it was a challenge, but: “Is there any democracy that doesn’t have deep political divisions?”

No analyst or politician the Guardian spoke to for this story dared to predict an outcome.

Nachman says he has never seen Taiwan more divided.

“That wound needs to be addressed, regardless of who wins in the end.”

Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu and Lillian Yang