Opposition continues to block referendum proposals

A watered-down version of a referendum law presented by a DPP lawmaker failed to make progress in the legislature yesterday after KMT and PFP legislators blocked its review in the Home and Nations Committee.

The pan-blue camp used a procedural technicality, as they did on Monday, to prevent review of the law submitted by DPP Legislator Trong Chai (蔡同榮), saying that it would upset China.

TSU lawmaker Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) adjourned the meeting until 11pm last night.

The draft, submitted with the signatures of 114 DPP, TSU and independent lawmakers, was scheduled to be reviewed on Monday and yesterday.

To ease the concerns of the two opposition parties, the pan-green camp revised the original draft so that referendums could not be held on "national orientation" issues, such as the country's boundaries, formal title and national anthem.

However, the draft retains the possibility for referendums to decide "other important national policies," a term that is not defined but is interpreted as including such things as nuclear power generation and the legalization of gambling.

The revisions also removed from the president the right to call referendums.

The new version of the draft states that a referendum can be called when 2 percent of the population, or half of all legislators, sign a petition on addressing "important national policies."

However, the amendments did little to assuage the fears of the opposition lawmakers.

KMT legislative leader Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) said that the purpose of the referendum law was to eliminate the Republic of China.

To ensure the abandonment of the draft law, Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), executive director of the KMT's Central Policy Committee, and heavyweight PFP lawmaker Chung Jong-ji (鍾榮吉) both attended yesterday's meeting to manipulate the rules of procedure in the committee.

The committee was expected to vote at 11pm last night, and at press time it was expected that the two opposition parties would succeed in preventing a review of the law.

Chen said that he would re-schedule the review of the law in the coming weeks.

Shortly after the meeting was adjourned yesterday morning, China's Taiwan affairs spokesman Zhang Mingqing (張銘清), echoed the two opposition parties by expressing his government's unhappiness with the draft law.

"Taiwan's future should be decided by the 1.3 billion Chinese. Attempts to separate Taiwan from China by holding a referendum are illegal, invalid and destined not to be realized," Zhang said in a routine press conference.