Constitution must change, experts say

Sunday, Oct 12, 2003, Page 4

Dane Waters, left, president of the US Initiative and Referendum Institute, and Bruno Kaufmann, his counterpart in Europe, yesterday discussed the question of implementing referendums in Taiwan. PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES

Taipei Times): President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) pledged to rewrite the Constitution in 2006 through a national referendum. Some people are concerned that if the Constitu-tion can be altered at any time when more than 50 percent of the population vote for the change, the dignity and authority of the Con-stitution could be at risk. What do you think about this?

Bruno Kaufmann: What is the authority in a democratic society? The people. If you have the majority of the people, you have the highest authority you can get.

The Constitution is the basic order of the democracy you are living by. But the reality is changing all the time. The Constitution must also be able to change all the time. If the people think the Constitution has to be amended on certain issues, there should be such a possibility.

It is a crisis in modern societies that while a constitution could be out of date, you don't know what to do with it because the procedures to change the constitution are very difficult. A referendum offers a good way to solve this problem.

"The Constitution must ... be able to change all the time. If the people think the Constitution has to be amended on certain issues, there should be such a possibility."

Bruno Kaufmann, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe

Dane Waters: Every constitution is a living, breathing document and it must meet the requirements of the times. The reason our founding fathers in the US included the provisions to change the constitution was specifically because they realized it needs to be a document that can be updated as times change.

The concerns that citizens are going to come and change the constitution on a regular basis are not theoretically true. If you look around the US, citizens don't just run out arbitrarily changing the constitution. But even if they chose to, in a democracy, you've got to have faith in the people.

TT: After Taiwan failed in its seventh bid to join the WHO in May, President Chen proposed to conduct a national referendum for the people to vote on whether they wanted to join this UN body. From a foreign perspective, do you think holding a national referendum will indeed justify Taiwan's bid to enter the WHO? How much will a referendum, if it is carried out, boost Taiwan's chances of entering the WHO?

Kaufmann: You can compare this case to many countries in Europe that were considering membership of the EU. They mostly had negotiations about it first and then wrote treaties on it. You can also start the process by having a public mandate.

Norway two referendums on the EU membership. Two times the people said no.

You may need a referendum [on joining the WHO] to get a strong mandate to start with and a backup in the international community.

It is different from the independence issue [Taiwan's independence from China], this is a far less controversial and dangerous vote.

I would say it is a very bad idea to have referendums on international issues before you have referendums on internal issues.

Waters: One of the reasons for a vote to join the WHO is from the standpoint of letting the world understand that Taiwan is a democracy and a state where the people have an interest in this. Now the political policy is that citizens of Taiwan strongly voice support for joining the WHO and this could make countries more inclined to accept Taiwan's entrance.

Going to the national identity issue, I think this vote should be the last one to take place.

Taiwanese to first settle the referendum process on other issues before they get to the national identity issue.

Holding referendums first will allow the country to work out the bugs before it gets to the refe-rendum on national identity.

Holding referendum on joining the WHO is really saying to the international community that it's not only the government asking to join the WHO, it's all the citizens of Taiwan that are asking to join.

One the benefits of holding other referendums prior to the one dealing with the independence issue, if one were to take place, is the fact that it also allows the opportunity to test the relations between Taiwan and China.

If you hold a national vote on the WHO, on reducing the number of people in the legislature and on other issues, I believe that it will help China to accept these votes. Eventually it would be harder for China to oppose a national vote on independence because you held these other votes.

[But] referendums should not be established in Taiwan as a means to another end. [It should not be that] we have the referendum process because we want a vote on independence.

What to be getting lost in the debates [about referendums] is the establishment of initiatives and a recall process as well. The initiative process is when the citizens collect signatures to put an issue to the vote.

If the initiative process is established at the same time as the referendum process, the citizens will have a strong check on the government.

If they believe the government is going too far, the citizens can step in with the initiative process to stop that from happening. The best thing the government can do is to not only focus on establishing a referendum process, but also on establishing an initiative process, because I think these go hand in hand.

TT: If a referendum on Taiwan's national identity is to be held, who should be organizing the referendum? Should the UN intervene to help organize the referendum, as it did in East Timor in 1999?

Kaufmann: I think it would be part of the solution to add international acceptance of the referendum. There has always been a problem that you need to get all the parties that are involved in a referendum together. That's also the problem of having an independence referendum in Taiwan.

You have the People's Republic of China, which is not in favor of the vote. China has a very strong influence on other governments.

You have just seen the case with Switzerland now. The country changed the national designation of Taiwanese people on its residence permits from "Taiwan" to "Chinese Taipei."

That's a typical example of this [China's] pressure. For that reason it would be very important that the UN plays some role.

Otherwise a risk that the referendum is likely to only give Taiwanese people's opinion about what they want, and that it will not really strengthen Taiwan's international position.

Waters: I don't think the UN's establishing and being the organization that creates the referendums should necessarily be the case in Taiwan. I do believe what's going on in Taiwan is that you have the theoretical approach and the reality.

The theoretical aspect is that Taiwan definitely should, as a sovereign state, have the authority to hold a referendum. The political reality is that even though Taiwan can theoretically hold a referendum, I think it is critical that it has international legitimacy. In order to have international legitimacy, it needs to be supported by other countries.

I do believe that the UN can play a very pivotal role. I also believe the Taiwanese people have the ability to hold and decide their own referendum. The UN can play a very prominent role in legitimizing the referendum.