A referendum might express the will of the public or it might decide policies. In both cases, it manifests the will of those who exercise sovereignty.
If Taiwanese do not have full referendum rights, they cannot be the true masters of the nation and they cannot be truly free — they are just the slaves of the nation’s rulers.
When Taiwanese ditched the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime, it was to be the free masters of the nation, not to be the slaves of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Free people’s complete referendum rights include the right to decide the convergence or separation of states. The EU is an example of the convergence of states, while Britain’s exit from the EU and the options of independence for Scotland and Quebec are examples of separation.
Of course this includes the right to decide upon a national constitution.
The DPP has reservations about the scope of possible amendments to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) and there are even long-standing rumors that it would like to make it even more restrictive than it already is. The public sees China’s possible reactions as the reason for the DPP’s apprehension, ie, Beijing’s approval or disapproval of any amendments.
The Referendum Act is really just a legal mechanism and the establishment of a comprehensive mechanism to hold referendums is purely an internal affair for Taiwan. To safeguard Taiwan’s right to decide its own future and create the greatest possible space for domestic policy reforms, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been taking a low-key approach toward China.
Taiwanese for the most part find this understandable and forgivable, but that does not mean that the people or the president should completely bow to pressure from China — especially when it tries to meddle in Taiwan’s internal policies and domestic affairs.
Support for a comprehensive Referendum Act means supporting freedom and human rights. It does not necessarily mean support for holding a referendum to decide between surrender and independence, still less does it mean actually supporting either surrender or independence.
Consider, for example, the question of drawing up a constitution. A referendum proposal to decide on a constitution, like any other proposal, would have to go through a series of stages, from the initial proposal, through the gathering of endorsement signatures, the establishment of a referendum, debates and finally the actual vote. The Tsai administration or any political party would be able to oppose the proposition at any stage to show “good will” to China.
However, they should not oppose the right to hold such a referendum at the legislative stage, as that would entail depriving Taiwanese of their basic human rights and broad freedoms.
In the world of political science it is said that “foreign relations are an extension of domestic policy,” but nobody says “domestic policy is an extension of foreign relations,” and for good reason. If the idea that “domestic policy is an extension of foreign relations” was taken to its logical conclusion, it would result in almost any matter being influenced by foreign-policy objectives and the pressure exerted by other countries.
With regard to cross-strait ties, China has preferences and opinions about almost every internal Taiwanese affair and seeks to exert pressure accordingly. If Taipei bowed down to Beijing’s opinions and pressure in all matters, surely that would reduce it to the status of a Chinese colony that enjoyed neither sovereignty nor autonomy.
Peter Wang is the founder of the Taiwan Republic Campaign.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
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;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS