The People First Party (PFP) legislative caucus yesterday urged people not to pick up their referendum ballots, saying that doing so "is also a means of voting."
The PFP legislative caucus' call was a rehashing of party Chairman James Soong's (
"All law-abiding citizens have the right to not pick up their referendum ballots, since the proposed referendum is illegal and there is already a national consensus about the two referendum questions," said PFP Legislator Hsieh Chang-chieh (
"Refusing to vote in the referendum and not picking up a ballot reflects the universal values and consensus among the citizens. We want to tell the public that law-abiding citizens should refuse to vote in the referendum and only pick up ballots for the presidential election," Hsieh said.
PFP legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
"We will only try to make clear the illegality of the issue and leave the decision [of whether to pick up the ballots] to the voters. As for the Chinese Nationalist Party's [KMT's] decision regarding the referendum, we will respect whatever they decide for themselves," Liu said.
Commenting on the group of talk show hosts who expressed interest in participating in a debate regarding the proposed referendum a day earlier, PFP legislator Chen Chin-hsin (
The group forming the opposition team included independent Legislator Sisy Chen (陳文茜), writer Li Ao (李敖) and TV news program host Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康).
The Central Election Commission (CEC) is planning a series of 10 debates, five for each of the two questions on the referendum proposed by President Chen Shui-bian (
In view of the failure of the opposition KMT-PFP alliance legislative caucuses to present their lists of potential candidates for the debate to the CEC on Monday, a coalition of talk show hosts famous for their anti-Chen stance launched a signature drive on Tuesday, petitioning for the chance to play the voice of the opposition in the debates.
Chen Chin-hsin, who had been insisting that the alliance should take part in the debate as the opposition, acknowledged that the group's willingness to participate in the debate was a bonus for the pan-blue camp.
"The debate with Sisy Chen and the others arguing in opposition to the referendum questions will provide an opportunity for the general public to see how absurd Chen Shui-bian's proposed referendum is," Chen Chin-hsin said.
KMT Legislator Yu Tzu-shiang (
Stating that the debates are being held to argue over the substance of the two referendum questions, Yu said the alliance would not take part in the debates because "it has no different opinions with regard to the [two] questions."
According to Chin Heng-wei (
Sisy Chen, formerly the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) publicity chief, has now allied herself with the pan-blue camp and has been the driving force behind the pan-blue camp's publicity machine.
Li had run as the New Party's presidential candidate in the 2000 presidential election while Jaw, a former New Party legislator, had run an unsuccessful mayoral election against Chen Shui-bian during the 1994 Taipei mayoral race.
"For them to want to participate in the debate, they have to first accept the premise that Chen Shui-bian's proposed referendum is legal before they could engage in the debate in the first place," Chin said.
"In other words, the very fact that these people are eager to play the `negative side' of the debate suggests that their stance on Chen Shui-bian's planned referendum is not in sync with that of the pan-blue alliance, which has branded Chen Shui-bian's planned referendum illegal," he added.
The alliance has been insisting that Chen Shui-bian's proposal lacked a statutory basis and did not meet the criteria detailed in Article 17 of the Referendum Law (
Article 17 entitles the president to initiate a defensive referendum on national security issues "whenever the country is faced by an external threat that could interfere with national sovereignty."
Chen Shui-bian's two proposed questions will ask people whether they support enhancing the nation's defensive capabilities should China refuse to withdraw the missiles it has targeted at Taiwan, and whether or not the government should hold talks with China on cross-strait peace and stability.
In response to a query about whether the debates would have impact on the alliance's electoral outlook, as merely holding the series of debates could be construed as highlighting the DPP's advantages on the issue, Alex Tsai (
"The alliance has done quite a bit of research and polling on the issue of the referendum, and the results of our research tell us that the majority of the public is treating the referendum as an issue seperate from the presidential election," said Tsai.
"Given that, no matter how heated the issue of the referendum may become [as a result of the debates], it would not have much impact on the presidential election," he said.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: