Braving the rain, a group of protesters yesterday marched from Taipei’s Longshan Temple (龍山寺) to the Executive Yuan calling on the government not to prevent the rightful expression of popular will on a proposed cross-strait trade pact through a referendum.
The Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee is slated to convene a meeting on June 3 to decide whether a referendum question proposed by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) conforms to the requirements of a referendum proposal.
The TSU has proposed the question: “Do you agree that the government should sign an economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] with China?”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government believes an ECFA is necessary to keep Taiwan from being economically marginalized as other countries sign free-trade agreements with China. It hopes to ink the deal with Beijing by the end of next month.
Critics say that workers and industries will suffer once cheaper Chinese products flood the market, that Taiwan’s sovereignty will be undermined and that the deal makes Taiwan too economically dependent on China.
PROPOSAL
People Matters, the group that organized the march yesterday, asked the committee not to reject the proposal as it did last August after a similar drive by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), on the grounds that its referendum question was based on a hypothetical situation.
Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), a member of the group, said the KMT government should not reject a referendum proposal that has garnered more than 100,000 signatures.
SIGNATURES
The Referendum Act (公民投票法) stipulates that for the first phase of a referendum drive, an individual or organization must collect signatures from 0.5 percent of the number of qualified voters in the last presidential election — which was around 80,000 people in this case.
Of the nearly 200,000 signatures the TSU has already collected, 110,000 petition forms were delivered to the Central Election Commission last month for review and then forwarded to the Referendum Review Committee for further deliberation.
The protesters called on the government to dismiss the Referendum Review Committee and accept the right to a referendum.
A separate rally against an ECFA was also held last night by the Taiwan Society.
The rally featured stalls set up on Liberty Square selling “Made in Taiwan” produce and industrial products — part of a campaign to draw attention to the fact that an ECFA with China would jeopardize local industries and flood Taiwan with sub-standard products from China.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS