Chen allays constitution fears

"A constitution is a guarantee of citizens' legal rights. It is also an agreement between all citizens. It is totally unreasonable to keep an existing constitution when new democratic achievements have been made."

President Chen Shui-bian

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said that his desire to push for a new constitution was not an attempt to move Taiwan toward de jure independence as China has alleged, but to cement the nation's democracy.

"Our goal to come up with a new Constitution for the country is not as Beijing alleges a bid for Taiwan independence," he said. "On the contrary, we need a new Constitution to cement the democratic achievements and the hard work of the Taiwanese people during the last 20 or 30 years."

The president made the remarks in a keynote speech to an international seminar that was held to floor discussion on constitutional reform and re-engineering.

Chen said that 12 new constitutions had been introduced in central and eastern Europe between 1989 and 1997. In the past few years, new constitutions were also introduced in South Africa, South Korea and Mongolia.

"This is not a coincidence. This is a natural result following democratic change," Chen said.

"A constitution is a guarantee of citizens' legal rights. It is also an agreement between all citizens," he added. "It is totally unreasonable to keep an existing constitution when new democratic achievements have been made, isn't it?"

Chen said that the greatest challenge for the government in re-engineering a new constitution for the country was the continued tug-of-war between political parties since the Democratic Progressive Party came to power.

But the president said he was confident that the challenge would be overcome.

"We've ended the White Terror era, we've lifted the bans on freedom of speech and freedom of the press," he said.

"We've also reformed the legislature and allowed the people to vote for their representatives," he said. "This project may be more difficult compared to those, but I am sure we will make it anyway."

Chen Lung-chu (陳隆志), president of the Taiwan New Century Foundation think tank, told the seminar that a new constitution would show the people's thirst for self-determination and self-recognition.

Wayne State University assistant law professor Brad Roth, a panelist, said that Taiwan had become a political entity when it gave up asserting its jurisdiction over China.

However, Taiwan was still not recognized as a state by international society because of complicated political conflict, he said.

Roth quoted James Crawford's The Creation of States in International Law, which states that: "Taiwan is not a state because it still has not unequivocally asserted its separation from China and is not recognized as state distinct from China."

"At any rate, bold moves, such as constitutional reforms that overtly assert Taiwan independence, are not likely to affect the determinants of the Taiwan's legal status, and are still less likely to be beneficial to Taiwan's position in practical terms," Roth said.

Roth added that Taiwan's hopes for full enjoyment of the rights, powers, obligations and immunities of statehood lie along the path of continued indirect and incremental progress."

National Taiwan Ocean University's Institute of the Law of the Sea Director Robert Chen (陳荔彤) pinpointed what he saw as the unreasonable sections of the Constitution to explain the need for a new one.

"Our Constitution still asserts jurisdiction over China, which does not reflect reality at all," he said. "It will be difficult for us to be recognized by international society if we do not make a change to that."