THE CHINESE NATIONALIST Party (KMT) has accused the Democratic Progressive Party of hijacking what it calls "the sacred referendums" to mess up the elections, and is therefore urging voters not to vote in the referendums so as not to "destroy" the elections.
The KMT's statement is based on a strange logic.
If a loved one is kidnapped or hurt, we should try to save and protect them, not abandon them. If a sacred and precious belief is being hijacked, we should try to realize it and implement it, not discard it.
Holding referendums concurrently with elections is common in many countries.
In theory, this is considered favorable to maintaining ballot secrecy.
Not only that, but from a more academic perspective, cost sharing can create "spillover" effects, or, to put it more plainly, the elections and referendums can benefit each other by being held on the same day.
To voters, the cost of voting is the time spent. This is an obstacle inherent to democracy.
The cost of the referendum is not just the few hundred million NT dollars spent on administering the elections. The real cost of the elections should be calculated with Taiwan's GDP in mind.
The daily production value created by the public is NT$48.8 billion, or about NT$6 billion per hour.
From this perspective, the cost of voters taking time out to vote is astronomical.
To have time for the polls, people have to sacrifice their work or their leisure time. Helping them save time will increase their willingness to vote.
Thus combining elections, saving time and promoting democracy are three compatible concepts.
Combining the referendums and the legislative elections is good for both the ballots.
If the KMT really believes that the referendum institution is sacred, it should approve of attempts to save voters' time and protect ballot secrecy.
Only political parties that are opposed to the full and free expression of public opinion would worry about "one election hijacking another," only a party relying on money to mobilize voters for the legislative elections would tell supporters to forgo voting in the referendums and only a party with nominees whose interests stand in stark contrast to the referendums would accuse another party of using them to hijack elections.
When the KMT says that the referendums are sacred but refuses to vote in them, it is in fact revealing the true face of its presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou (
If the KMT has nothing to hide when it comes to its party assets, or if they support Taiwan's democracy, the party should stand up and convince the public to vote "no" to recovering the party's inappropriately obtained assets.
Instead, the party rejects the referendums altogether, rather than defending itself and justifying its party assets, thus compounding a bad deed by also denying what they claim to hold sacred.
By rejecting the referendums, the KMT is also sacrificing its own anti-corruption referendum. In its attempt to protect its ill-gotten party assets, the KMT has demonstrated to the public the insincerity with which it called for the referendum.
Paraphrasing what has by now become a well-known statement by Ma, I would like to tell the members of the KMT that I see you as human beings, as Taiwanese and I will educate you: The sacred referendums should be carried out and unjustly obtained party assets should be returned.
Lin Chia is a political commentator in Taipei.
Translated by Eddy Chang
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS