President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen said in his opening remarks at the International Conference on the Comparative Studies of Referendum hosted by Taiwan Thinktank that "referendums have to be tied to elections ... Not only it is normal in a democracy, it is also perfectly justified."
"Over the past four years, there has been a consensus among the ruling and opposition camps that referendums must be tied to elections ... Everyone is doing it, and no one says that it is in violation of laws and regulations or the Constitution," Chen said.
However, the nation's first referendum held in tandem with an election -- under Chen's leadership -- was slammed by the pan-blue camp as a ploy designed to garner election support in the 2004 presidential election and manipulate voters.
Initiative and Referendum Institute president Bruno Kaufmann, said he disagreed with Chen on this part when asked by the Taipei Times for comment.
"I don't share the point that referendums and elections should be done on the same day, because I think it's a risk to mix it up too much with party politics," Kaufmann said.
Kaufmann said that although holding a referendum in tandem with an election can help ensure referendum turnout reaches the quota required for the results to be valid, such a practice is not preferable. Kaufmann suggested Taiwan remove the article in the Referendum Law (公投法) that requires 50 percent voter turnout -- approximately 8 million voters -- for a referendum to be valid.
"I don't see a point in having a threshold for a referendum when you don't have it for elections. If you had it for elections, it would be logical to have it for referendums," Kaufmann said.
Chen has suggested that the law be amended to lower the voter turnout threshold.
"The law probably stipulates one of the highest thresholds in the world," Chen said.
In addition to the voter turnout threshold, the law stipulates that the signatures of 0.5 percent of eligible voters -- approximately 80,000 -- be collected to apply to hold a referendum. In the second application stage, 5 percent of eligible voters -- approximately 800,000 -- must sign the petition.
Kaufmann said that if signature and voter turnout requirements are too high, they become a hinder to direct democracy mechanisms.
Direct democracy activists from Palau, Switzerland, Japan, the US and East Timor, among other countries, also attended the forum, sharing the experiences their countries have had holding referendums.
Zoltan Tibor Pallinger, former deputy head of the Electoral Commission of Switzerland, said Swiss direct democracy was guided by the principle that popular involvement should be higher the more important the issue at hand is.
"Consequently, the entity which has the greatest democratic legitimacy, i.e. the people, must be able to participate in and also have the last word in the most important matters," he said.
Next year will again see referendums held in tandem with elections. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is pushing for a referendum on reclaiming the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) stolen assets to be held along with the legislative election in January, and the KMT is seeking to hold an "anti-corruption" referendum demanding that officials convicted of corruption return embezzled funds to the public.
The DPP also wants to hold a referendum on joining the UN under the name "Taiwan" together with the presidential election in March, while the KMT has initiated a signature drive calling for a referendum to rejoin the UN under the name "Republic of China."
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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