Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Trong Chai (蔡同榮) yesterday said that the possibility of finalizing referendum legislation in this legislative session was very good, as long as the Legislative Yuan decides to make reviews of a referendum draft bill a priority.
"Formulating a law for a referendum exercise should be completed soon, as the ruling party declared the legislative approval as its priority. The Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT], as far as I learn from newspapers, also made a similar pledge," Chai said.
Chai, who has been pushing for referendum legislation for the past decade, said in a Central News Agency interview that he estimated a legislative showdown would conclude the legal formulation, when lawmakers vote for whether the country's first referendum should take place on the same day as next year's presidential election.
He acknowledged that he met with Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
"The speaker was very nice and said that he will prefer to manage negotiations in private, before party representatives at the legislature enter into formal negotiations to reach consensus," Chai told the Taipei Times yesterday.
A referendum draft law, presented by Chai and a few other pan-green legislators, failed to advance for reviewal during the previous session.
The bill again failed to clear the legislative floor when lawmakers held a three-day extra session in July. KMT and People First Party (PFP) lawmakers at the last minute turned back on their support of Chai and negotiations on the bill ended in chaos before the legislative speaker adjourned the special meeting.
Chai also confirmed that he sought KMT legislative leader Tseng Yung-chuan's (
He claimed that his talks with Wang and Tseng revealed that pan-green and pan-blue partisans disagreed on four viewpoints.
The two camps differed on whether a final referendum law would allow referendum exercises to be held for changing the name of the nation, the national flag and the national anthem.
Second, the two sides disagreed with whether the referendum legislation should demand political responsibility from persons or political groups initiating a referendum debate.
Lawmakers were also in discord about whether the legislature should be empowered with giving the ultimate approval to proposed referendum debates, Chai said.
The fourth point of disagreement was whether the country should have its first referendum on the polling day of next year's presidential election.
The KMT-PFP alliance members explicitly wanted to separate the referendum from the presidential election, Chai said.
A planned march in Kaohsiung on Oct. 25 to push for referendum legislation could be cancelled if lawmakers agree to prioritize reviewing the bill soon, he said.
The idea of having a march was first voiced by Chai.
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