Six more referendums are set to be held on Nov. 24 alongside the nine-in-one local elections after passing the Central Election Commission’s final review, the commission said yesterday, adding that all forged signatures found in the petitions would be reported to prosecutors so that criminal charges could be brought.
One referendum proposes scrapping the planned coal-fired Shenao Power Plant (深澳電廠) and another keeping the import ban on food products from five Japanese prefectures imposed following the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster — both proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — while two referendums address opposing same-sex marriage, one referendum banning education on homosexuality at elementary and junior-high schools, and one renaming the national sports team to “Taiwan” instead of “Chinese Taipei” for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Signatures using the names of people passed away before the signing date have been found in the submissions of all six proposals and since they were clearly forged, the commission said it has decided to report all of them to prosecutors based on Article 241 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法).
The commission has said that the same standards and process for dealing with forgery would be applied to all referendum proposals.
Of the six referendums, the proposal to keep the ban on Japanese food products was found to contain the highest percentage of signatures using dead people’s names, with 11,534 signatures using dead people’s names and 72,810 apparently forged signatures.
A total of 10 referendums are expected to be held on Nov. 24.
The other three are a proposal to pass amendments to the Civil Code to legalize same-sex marriage; a proposal for mandatory education on relationships, sex and homosexuality at elementary and junior-high schools; and a proposal to abolish the government’s plan for phasing out nuclear power.
Additional reporting by Ann Maxon
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