Plebiscite team to meet on Monday for the first time

The Executive Yuan is scheduled to launch the referendum review committee on Monday, a move to push forward President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) pledge to hold the nation's first referendum on or before next March's presidential poll.

The 15-person committee, awaiting the final approval of Premier Yu Shyi-kun, should include eight government officials and seven academics and experts, according to Minister without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung (許志雄), assigned by Yu to head the committee.

Confirmed committee members are: Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲), Director-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Liu San-chi (劉三錡), former director of the Taiwan Association of University Professors Chuang Wan-shou (莊萬壽), National Taiwan University law professor Hung Kuei-tsan (洪貴參) and John Chen (陳傳岳), president of the Judicial Reform Foundation.

In addition to reviewing the issues for referendums, the committee will soon make public detailed information regarding measures to counter the eventuality that local governments' refuse to hold a referendum.

Under the Cabinet's enforcement measure for the holding of referendums, an 11- to 15-person referendum-review committee will be set up to scrutinize the issues for referendums and implementation plans put forth by the authorities concerned. Their tenure is two years.

The Cabinet will then have to promulgate the referendum issues within 10 days of their creation by a Cabinet meeting. The voting date must be arranged within two months from the day the issues are made public. Debates and seminars must be held during that period.

The measure also stipulates that the Central Election Commission, which is the agency that would be assigned to hold the referendum, is responsible for supervising its local offices to make sure they carry out the plan. The Cabinet can entrust private organizations to do the job if the commission's local office refuses to comply.

The enforcement measure was drawn up in case legislation governing referendums cannot be passed by the legislature in time. In April last year, the Cabinet sent a draft of the initiative and referendum bill to the legislature for review but lawmakers were deadlocked over upon which issues the people would be allowed to decide with the powerful form of direct democracy.

In addition to calling on the legislature to pass the referendum bill during the next legislative session, Hsu yesterday reiterated that the Cabinet's first priority is to push for the speedy passage of the bill in the legislature so that the Cabinet has sufficient time to prepare.

According to the commission, the committee has to decide what issues it will put before the citizenry before November if it is to coincide with the presidential election.