Mon, Feb 16, 2004 page8

• Editorial: Frankness needed from both sides

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  As the Cabinet prepares for a series of debates on the proposed referendum, the Miaoli County Government has been devising ways to subvert this exercise in popular democracy.

  The solution to this problem is, of course, simple enough. The Central Election Commission has determined that all the voting for both the presidential candidates and the referendum must take place at the same location and that the three ballot papers must be picked up at the same table. All it has to do now is to say that any deviation from this procedure will invalidate all polling at affected locations.

  In short, mess around with the referendum and you disenfranchise the voters of Miaoli entirely on Mar. 20. If the voters find this unacceptable, let them take it up with the county government.

  As for the debates themselves, let us hope that the real reason for the referendum and the contending political camps' attitudes toward it will be revealed.

  The pan-blues appear to have been conflicted over whether the referendum is a waste of time or a huge danger. It is tempting to surmise that they are looking at the questions and thinking the former while their masters in Beijing, simply by virtue of any referendum at all taking place, are suggesting the latter.

  The pan-greens, on the other hand, are talking about the "peace referendum" as if all that Taiwan's voters have to do is support the referendum and China's military threat will go away.

  Let us be frank, the first referendum question might at least stop China's pan-blue allies from blocking military budgets in the legislature; the second question will do nothing at all.

  It is not surprising that mixed messages have come from Washington. A number of officials, most recently US Secretary of State Colin Powell, have pointed out that the questions are not the kind of questions that are usually put in referendums and they are in fact about issues that should simply be matter of executive policy decision.

  If the referendum is about what it appears to be about, that would certainly be true, and this newspaper would deplore the government's wasting money on a vote on non-controversial issues that are well within its competence to decide.

  But it is not. What it is about is derailing Beijing's assumptions about how unification can be achieved. China has long believed that unification was a matter of negotiation between two elites that had no need to seek the approval of the people they governed concerning the decisions they made. The model China has for negotiation is that between itself and the British over the future of Hong Kong. Decisions were made in London and Beijing and nary a vote cast by the people of Hong Kong about their fate.

  Beijing has always though that a similar negotiation might be effected with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over Taiwan. But once a referendum has successfully been held, it realizes that never again will any party be able to conclude a deal with China which substantially alters the status quo without a referendum by the Taiwanese people. And not even Beijing believes its own propaganda enough to think that Taiwanese will vote for unification as turkeys might vote for Christmas.

  Let us hope the debates, therefore, contain some honesty about both why the referendum is taking place and why the blue camp wants to stop it. It is not dishonorable to try to protect Taiwan from being "sold out." Why doesn't the Democratic Progressive Party admit it? And let the pan-blues tell us what they really have against popular democracy. Currently neither side is being frank about the referendum issue, to its detriment. For the truth is that it doesn't matter what the questions are; the only thing that matters is that the referendum should be held.

  Victory lies not in how votes are cast. Victory lies in the size of the turnout.
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