After months of speculation, lawmakers on Monday passed amendments to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) to decouple referendums from national elections. Starting in 2021, referendums are to be held on the fourth Saturday of August once every two years.
The changes came after the 10 referendums that were held alongside local elections last year created a logistical nightmare, leading to people waiting in lines for hours to cast their votes, as well as delayed results.
After the amendments were passed, opposition lawmakers said “referendums are dead,” saying that the changes would make it nearly impossible for any referendum to pass. However, their reasoning is unclear. It seemed that voters last year were highly interested in the referendums, as discussions over referendum questions overshadowed those about the elections, especially among young people who claim political apathy, but still care about social issues.
However, choosing the nation’s leaders and lawmakers is more important and consequential than voting in referendums, and the two are better off held separately, so that enough attention is paid to both. Otherwise, referendums can easily become a tool for politicians and interest groups to further their agenda, use the issues to sway voters or influence their constituents.
Fortunately, the government dropped a clause from the amendments that would have required people to present photocopies of their national IDs when signing referendum petitions, as the cons outweigh the pros in this case. Taiwanese are generally leery of handing out their personal information, for good reason, and the requirement could have deterred people from participating in referendums, even though it would have prevented voter fraud.
In addition to not everyone carrying their IDs with them at all times, obtaining a photocopy might be easy in bigger cities like Taipei, but in rural areas people could give up signing a petition instead of walking to the nearest convenience store.
Most importantly, it seems like people need to be educated on the purpose of a referendum, as indicated by the misinformed reactions that were espoused even by politicians and media outlets when the nation legalized same-sex marriage last month.
The most prominent argument put forward by those opposed to marriage equality was that the majority of Taiwanese “rejected” same-sex marriage in a referendum last year and the government pushing it through was a “slap in the face” of public will.
Never mind that that was not even how the questions were worded; it is simply not how a democracy works. Every citizen’s rights are protected by the Constitution and no referendum can undermine that.
That many people still believe this kind of rhetoric raises the question of whether they even knew what they were voting for last year.
It is worrisome that referendums would continue to be used to further the agendas of certain political or interest groups under the guise of improving the nation in accordance with public will.
A lack of awareness is understandable, as barely any referendums were held before amendments to the act greatly lowered the threshold.
It would be two years before there is another referendum and if they are to become a regular occurrence in Taiwan, people will need to learn to discern what they are voting for and the implications of their vote, just like how it is increasingly important for people to differentiate fake news from facts.
A recent report concerning a student who is suing his teacher posed the question in its headline: Does failing a student in two subjects constitute bullying? The college student in Chiayi County apparently sought NT$2 million (US$63,603) in state compensation, but a court dismissed the case. The first reaction of many might have been to ask: What has happened to students nowadays? Some say that teachers have lost their authority, while others say students are overindulged. Some even start reminiscing over the days when “whatever the teacher says goes.” However, the real issue might be overlooked if emotional reactions like that are the
When I visited Taiwan last summer, I called on the nation to use its status as a technology superpower to build superweapons. It is obvious to me as I return a year later that Taiwan is now answering that call. By 2030, Taiwan envisions a domestic drone hub, capable of producing large quantities of drones per year. The nation continues to tighten cooperation across the private sector, scientific researchers and the elected government, on creating new and innovative production avenues for defense, while efforts to become central to the “democratic supply chain” are only increasing. Anduril is seeing all of these positive
Singaporean former Prime Minister and current senior minister Lee Hsien- Loong(李顯龍) last month stood on Chinese soil and told Beijing that Singapore cooperates because of “shared interests”, not because of common “ethnic descent,” a significant statement that has upended China’s cognitive warfare tactics of “ethnic nationalism.” Along with using its military buildup and economic growth to expand its international dominance, China has long deployed ethnic politics to promote the idea that all ethnic Chinese around the world, regardless of citizenship, share a tight bond with the Chinese motherland, by which it means the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
President William Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) May 20 second-anniversary address was not just a routine policy review; it was damage control. US President Donald Trump’s remarks — that he did not want to see anyone move toward independence and that the delivery of a major Taiwan arms package could depend on the progress of US-China relations — unsettled Taiwan’s public and created an opening for opposition parties to question whether Taiwan was being treated as a bargaining chip in Washington’s dealings with Beijing. Lai’s speech was designed to close that opening. The address covered the expected ground: sovereignty, cross-strait relations, defense spending,
RSS