A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator said yesterday that a legislative resolution, suggested by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) to revoke President Chen Shui-bian's (
The DPP, in the minority at the legislature, lost all of the 15 legislative showdowns while formulating the Referendum Law (
"The KMT and PFP are now deliberating an amendment to deprive the president of the power to take a referendum initiative, which indeed would prohibit people from any right to hold a referendum," Cho said.
The KMT and PFP meanwhile threatened to formulate a legislative resolution that would force Chen to recall the referendum on the two questions he unveiled on Friday. This is the way in which the opposition parties use bullying methods to get what they want in the legislature, Cho said.
Cho's criticisms were a response to opposition lawmakers vowing to push ahead with overhauling the Referendum Law to revoke the president's power of initiating referendums.
The KMT and PFP in addition planned to formulate a legislative resolution on the two referendum questions to compel the president to recall his referendum plan.
Cho said that the opposition's idea lacked a legal foundation in either the Constitution or the Referendum Law.
"Furthermore, the indirect democracy exercised by legislators cannot be stronger than a referendum, where the electorate directly voice their opinion through a public vote," he said.
Cho pledged that the DPP would protect the dignity of laws and safeguard people's right to hold referendums.
The pan-blue parties should easily be able to pass a legislative resolution, which merely requires approval from half of the 225-member legislature, since they form the majority in the Legislative Yuan.
A resolution driven by the opposition calling on the president to stop his referendum plan, however, would be unusual and engender a controversy over legislative power.
A resolution concerning the president's proclamation actually would be of little significance, since the legislative order has nothing to do with laws.
A DPP caucus leader nonetheless denounced such a motion.
"A legislative resolution cannot be in conflict with the law. The resolution proposed by the KMT and PFP would be null and void because President Chen proposed the referendum in accordance with the Referendum Law," said Tsai Huang-liang (
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) whip Cheng Cheng-lung (程振隆) reminded his opposition counterparts that a legislative resolution could not supersede a referendum.
"In that case, a referendum by the people of Quebec to decide whether they want to be separate from Canada could be replaced by a parliamentary resolution that there is no need to have a referendum," Cheng said.
In related news, PFP legislator leader Chou Hsi-wei (
The alliance said on Saturday that it would request a constitutional interpretation by the Council of Grand Justices and also ask pan-blue mayors and county commissioners to boycott the referendum.
"Even if pan-blue mayors and county commissioners go along with it and support the referendum in their respective constituencies, what would happen if the council hands down its interpretation later and says the referendum is illegal?" Chou asked. He said that the local leaders would then, according to the law, face charges of holding illegal referendums.
"In that event, Chen or the Executive Yuan must assume all legal responsibility," Chou said, demanding that Chen make a public pledge about this matter.
(additional reporting by Huang Tai-lin)
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS