Last Thursday, the Cabinet’s Referendum Review Committee approved the Consumers’ Foundation petition for a referendum on US beef imports by a vote of 16-0.
The proposed referendum has now entered the second stage, which requires 860,000 valid signatures.
Confronted with this situation, Government Information Office Minister Su Jun-pin’s (蘇俊賓) response was that “the Cabinet would respect referendum initiatives launched by civic groups.”
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) is probably not happy about this, given his comments in a radio interview on Nov. 3 last year, when he said that renewed negotiations were impossible, that the issue wasn’t appropriate for a referendum and that there was too much populism and not enough rational reasoning involved.
Let’s put aside the question of whether the Referendum Review Committee — which last year rejected a petition for a referendum on an economic cooperation and framework agreement (ECFA) with China supported by more than 150,000 signatures — will once again avoid trampling on public opinion because of “concerns over the political situation.”
That was an obvious result, and really is nothing to be happy about. Instead, it would be more worthwhile to consider the more difficult obstacles facing the current referendum proposal — which has now more or less become the wish of the general public — by the current unreasonable referendum law.
Even if the high threshold of 860,000 signatures can be reached, Article 30 of the Referendum Act (公民投票法) stipulates that more than 50 percent of all eligible voters must vote. Unless a referendum were combined with the 2012 presidential elections, that is an insurmountable obstacle.
In reality, however, a presidential election will never be combined with a referendum.
This means that even if a majority supported a referendum, it would still have no chance because of the impossible threshold.
This is no exaggeration. Even the Penghu County gambling referendum, which the government pushed hard to initiate, would very likely have been a futile exercise had it not been for the government’s amendment of the “Outlying Islands Building Regulations (離島建設條例)” to remove restrictions on voter turnout in the referendum law.
This should not dampen the enthusiasm of civic groups, nor does it imply that the outcome of a referendum alone is important, while the process in itself is not.
Instead, civic groups that stand up to the government’s unreasonable arrogance are worthy of great resepct.
The referendum process is important for the further consolidation of Taiwan’s democracy.
However, the spirit and purpose of the referendum system can’t be truly implemented unless the Referendum Act is revised, and only when this mess of a law has been fully reformed will there be reason to cheer.
Huang Kuo-chang is a member of Taiwan Thinktank.
TRANSLATED BY JENS KASTNER
A Chinese diplomat’s violent threat against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi following her remarks on defending Taiwan marks a dangerous escalation in East Asian tensions, revealing Beijing’s growing intolerance for dissent and the fragility of regional diplomacy. Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) on Saturday posted a chilling message on X: “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off,” in reference to Takaichi’s remark to Japanese lawmakers that an attack on Taiwan could threaten Japan’s survival. The post, which was later deleted, was not an isolated outburst. Xue has also amplified other incendiary messages, including one suggesting
Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) on Saturday last week shared a news article on social media about Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan, adding that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off.” The previous day in the Japanese House of Representatives, Takaichi said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a situation threatening Japan’s survival,” a reference to a legal legal term introduced in 2015 that allows the prime minister to deploy the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The violent nature of Xue’s comments is notable in that it came from a diplomat,
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
RSS