The Cabinet’s Referendum Review Committee rejected the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) referendum proposal on Thursday in part because the proposal “was not clear enough and asks the public to vote on something that has not yet happened.” These reasons defy common sense and show how the committee is trying to use administrative measures to block the move and thereby deprive the public of its right to hold a referendum.
The committee’s decision is not surprising or unexpected. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) still believes in a party-state with minority rule and opposes the idea that the public should be allowed to directly express its will or help formulate government policy. The KMT can do nothing to stop Taiwan’s democratic progress, but it has used its legislative majority to set almost insurmountable requirements for the proposal, collection of signatures, registration and passage of referendums.
It was only to be expected that the six referendums held under these restrictive rules over the past few years have all failed. With its total grip on power, it was only natural that the KMT would block any referendum related to its proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA).
The committee ignored procedural justice by forcing through a motion suspending the right to speak and moving to a vote before all committee members had a chance to express their opinions. Absurdly, this meant a decision was reached even before the reasons for that decision had been established.
The committee review should be carried out with a minimum of restrictions, and unless a proposal violates the Referendum Act (公投法), it should be submitted to the public. Instead, the committee overstepped its powers by declaring that the proposal was not clear enough and failing to undertake a substantive review of a proposal submitted by the public.
The argument that the proposal could not be approved because it asked the public to vote on something that has not yet happened restricts referendums to dealing with things past, incomprehensibly rejecting the reasoning behind the right of initiative. From this perspective, public issues would be required to first become reality — potentially causing harm or violating the public will — before a referendum can be held. This reduces direct democratic participation in policymaking to words on paper, hurting both national and public interests.
The committee’s decision is aimed at currying favor with their superiors. Their chop-logic directly blocked a proposal signed by 150,000 people and deprived 17 million voters of the right to directly express their opinion, giving the committee more decision-making power than they rightfully have. Only in totalitarian states can a small minority suppress the basic rights of the majority in this way. That this happens in a democracy is a frightening example of the speed and extent to which the current government is undermining decades of effort toward democratization. The view in both academic and political circles is that the Referendum Review Committee should only make a formal review, but as its superiors’ wishes are obvious, the committee ignored fundamental democratic requirements.
If the government can force through such a major agreement — and is prepared to sign it with an enemy state — without being able to explain it, then what are the chances the government will submit future agreements with China for review by the public?
In addition to filing an administrative appeal, the opposition should file an administrative lawsuit and ask for a constitutional interpretation to overturn the Referendum Review Committee’s inappropriate decision.
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) on Thursday last week urged democratic nations to boycott China’s military parade on Wednesday next week. The parade, a grand display of Beijing’s military hardware, is meant to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. While China has invited world leaders to attend, many have declined. A Kyodo News report on Sunday said that Japan has asked European and Asian leaders who have yet to respond to the invitation to refrain from attending. Tokyo is seeking to prevent Beijing from spreading its distorted interpretation of wartime history, the report
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China yesterday, where he is to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin today. As this coincides with the 50 percent US tariff levied on Indian products, some Western news media have suggested that Modi is moving away from the US, and into the arms of China and Russia. Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation fellow Sana Hashmi in a Taipei Times article published yesterday titled “Myths around Modi’s China visit” said that those analyses have misrepresented India’s strategic calculations, and attempted to view
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stood in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa on Thursday last week, flanked by Chinese flags, synchronized schoolchildren and armed Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, he was not just celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” he was making a calculated declaration: Tibet is China. It always has been. Case closed. Except it has not. The case remains wide open — not just in the hearts of Tibetans, but in history records. For decades, Beijing has insisted that Tibet has “always been part of China.” It is a phrase