The pan-blue camp's amended version of the Referendum Law (公民投票法), which puts more restrictions on initiating a defensive referendum, will get its first reading in the Legislative Yuan tomorrow.
The new version would require an emergency order and approval from the legislature before a defensive referendum could be called.
"The amendment will not be passed by the legislature before the election due to a four-month-long cross-party negotiation. But the proposal aims to remind the public that President Chen Shui-bian's (
The DPP caucus threatened to block the amendment in the upcoming cross-party negotiation.
"The pan-blue's proposal cannot obstruct the March 20 referendum," DPP caucus leader Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said. "The pan-blue camp is trying to prevent the public from exercising their right to a referendum. If the pan-blue camp tried to push the proposal through, the pan-green camp would oppose it to the end."
The pan-blue camp's amendment for Article 17, which demands that holding a defensive referendum will require an emergency order and approval by the Legislative Yuan, was passed by the legislature's Procedure Committee on Tuesday.
However, the Taiwan Solidarity Union's (TSU) proposal to eliminate the Referendum Review Committee (公投審議委員會) was rejected. Both TSU and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators in the Procedure Committee withdrew from the session in protest.
The Referendum Law passed only two months ago but because all parties were unsatisfied with the articles in the law, the KMT, TSU and DPP have each proposed an amended version.
The KMT's amendment tried to give the legislature more power to control the initiation of a defensive referendum, and the proposal ties up the defensive referendum with the president's right to issue an emergent order -- if the country is under external threat which may rattle the country's sovereignty, the president can issue an emergency order to hold a referendum, but the order needs to be endorsed by the Legislative Yuan within 10 days. If the legislature does not agree to the order, it would be nullified.
Meanwhile, the pan-green camp aims to give the Executive Yuan the right to initiate a referendum and to allow the public to decide on a new constitution by referendum.
After the committee passed the pan-blue's version, Tseng said that the proposal aimed to remind the public that the referendum on March. 20 was illegal.
The Executive Yuan also attacked the pan-blue camp's amended version saying an emergency order would restrict the people's right.
"Article 17 bestows the president with the right to hold a defensive referendum to prevent a crisis from happening," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said. "However, things like an emergency order or right to announce martial law mean that the country has gone into a military or economic crisis. They are different systems.
"So it is very confusing that the pan-blue legislators are trying to amend the Referendum Law so that when the president wants to initiate a defensive referendum he needs to issue an emergency order," he said. "Plus, Article 17 only says that `if the country is likely to suffer from an external threat,' and it does not mean that the country is being invaded. So the president has some space for his own judgment."
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS