Lawmakers yesterday cleared the majority of the proposed amendments to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) in a second reading, while resolving to send seven contentious amendments to a plenary session on Tuesday.
Legislators yesterday held cross-caucus negotiations over proposed amendments to the act, which has been widely criticized for introducing “birdcage referendums” due to the high thresholds that have to be passed for a referendum to be held.
Article 2 of the draft amendment, which addresses local governments’ jurisdiction to hold referendums, was set aside for further discussion during the upcoming plenary session after New Power Party (NPP) Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) proposed that the thresholds for local referendums be discussed alongside the thresholds for national referendums.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The current threshold for a local referendum is the same as that for a national referendum — a minimum of 50 percent of eligible voters must participate and at least half of those must vote “yes” to the proposal.
The threshold for a national referendum to be initiated is 1.5 percent of eligible voters, or about 280,000 signatures.
People First Party (PFP) caucus whip Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) expressed concern about further lowering the 1.5 percent threshold, saying that gathering 280,000 signatures might appear to be a lofty goal, but it is actually very easily attainable if political parties mobilize their supporters to launch a signature drive.
He criticized Article 14, which seeks to grant the Executive Yuan the purview to hold referendums on major policies if the proposal is approved by the legislature.
The amendment is seeking to override the legislative branch with referendums and should only be approved by adding a proviso — that the Cabinet should resign en masse if such a referendum fails to pass, Lee said.
However, the NPP welcomed Article 14, Huang lauding it as the manifestation of direct democracy.
No consensus was reached on Article 10, which seeks to lower the threshold for a national referendum to be initiated to 0.005 percent, and Article 28, which seeks to lower the threshold for referendums to be passed from 50 percent of eligible voters to 25 percent.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) said the KMT would unveil its proposals for the thresholds on Tuesday, adding that his caucus was working on an “Article 25-1,” which would allow for absentee voting in referendums.
NPP caucus convener Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) walked out of the meeting in protest after the DPP, KMT and PFP tried to persuade him to retract a motion to extend yesterday’s plenary session until midnight, so that all of the proposed amendments could be passed.
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