The ruling and opposition camps on Thursday finally reached an agreement to pass a referendum law before the end of this month following a turnaround in which the pan-blue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) agreed to stop insisting on several limitations on the referendum law.
However, despite the timetable and agenda having been set for the negotiations, political observers remain skeptical about the pan-blue alliance's sincerity in truly supporting a referendum law.
On Thursday, ruling and opposition lawmakers agreed to review a total of five draft versions of the referendum law at a two-day special cross-party consultation session starting Nov. 26.
The pan-blue alliance has stopped insisting on restrictions on topics for a referendum, including the controversial sovereignty issue, which the KMT and PFP have previously insisted must not be allowed to be voted on by referendum.
However, despite the initial consensus on the timetable for passing a referendum law, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the initiator of the referendum legislation, and the opposition parties disagree on various issues concerning the content of the law, including whether the government could be authorized to propose a referendum and whether a referendum could be held to coincide with the presidential election.
DPP legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) yesterday said the pan-blue alliance has been capricious in its stance towards the referendum, having initially called the referendum a drastic measure to push for Taiwanese independence, to its current attitude in which it said the referendum and Taiwanese independence are not necessarily related.
"The KMT and PFP's confusing stance resulted from a lack of core values. Their current priority is to win the presidential seat, but they have no clue about how a referendum should operate even if the law is passed and they win administrative power next year," Lin said.
Political analyst Chiu Hei-yuan (
"The KMT and PFP's high-ranking officials realized that it would be bad for their public support if they maintained resistance to referendum legislation, so they simply countered by opening the sovereignty issue for a referendum," Chiu said.
Chiu called the pan-blue camp's change of attitude an "insincere trick" and "a low strategy."
"The pan-blue camp has never seriously thought about the importance of a referendum and has always rejected it due to their long-term fear of the unwanted result that a referendum would provide a legal basis for the public to decide on Taiwan's claims of independence. In their mind, a referendum equals Taiwan's independence," Chiu said.
If the pan-blue politicians thought they could gain an edge in the presidential campaign by agreeing to pass the referendum law, they were wrong.
"They have already lost this part of the game, now they only wish to not lose more," Chiu said.
Editor-in-chief of Contemporary Magazine, Chin Heng-wei (
"The referendum legislation is basically contradictory to the KMT's rooted ideology that the Republic of China is the only legitimate government. The referendum would undermine such legitimacy and they certainly won't let that happen," Chin said.
Chin also said the blue camp's current concession on the referendum issue is basically a campaign consideration, but is not likely to score any extra points to its presidential campaign.
"The blue camp was basically forced to respond to the referendum issue raised by the DPP. All of their responses just followed the DPP's discourse and I don't think they were capable of adding something new and fresh to dominate the issue's development," Chin noted.
Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), president of the Taipei Society and a sociology professor at National Chengchi University yesterday said the KMT and PFP's change of stance came as a result of an awareness of their slipping support rates and the growing public support for the DPP-proposed legislation.
The pan-blue alliance finally came to realize that a referendum cannot be narrowly treated as a dispute about sovereignty issues, but in a broader sense it allows society to fairly discuss a number of issues and public policy.
As for the KMT-PFP's insistence that the government should be restricted from proposing a referendum, Ku said this was debatable, as many countries in Europe were responsible for holding referendums to decide issues such as whether to join the EU or adopt the euro.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods