President Chen Shui-bian (
Speaking to members of the 300A3 chapter of the Lions Club International at the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon, Chen said he had given his full support to a nationwide campaign re-launched by the Nuke-4 Referendum Initiative Association last month to overhaul the Referendum Law.
The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) Central Standing Committee yesterday also passed a motion supporting the group's initiative.
The association has demanded that rules governing national and regional referendums be eased, as all public matters, except for personnel deployment, should be put to a popular vote.
The referendum review committee should be abolished and legal thresholds reduced, it said.
The group also argues that the legal threshold for making the petition for a referendum valid should be lowered to 100 and the number of signatures collected to make the proposal legitimate should be brought down to 1.5 percent of eligible voters.
The law stipulates that the signatures of at least 0.5 percent of eligible voters at the last presidential election are needed for a referendum proposal to be established.
After passing the threshold, the signatures of 5 percent of the eligible voters must be collected within six months for a referendum to be held. Moreover, half of the total number of eligible voters must cast their ballots, with half of those valid votes cast agreeing on the issue for the referendum's results to be declared valid.
Chen said that referendums were a manifestation of the universal value of democracy and the fundamental exercise of human rights but that the present Referendum Law was a vile law that deprives the people of their democratic rights.
He said he hoped the legislature would amend the legislation by the end of the year and get rid of unreasonable and ridiculous articles.
Chen said he was particularly proud of three achievements in his seven years as president: holding the first national referendum, nationalizing the armed forces and effecting the first transfer of power.
Chen said he lived the past 2,600 days like a boat sailing against the current and if he had not encouraged himself to forge courageously ahead, he and the administration would not have made it this far.
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