Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) on Tuesday night asked members serving on the Referendum Review Committee to exercise their duty faithfully and abide by the spirit of the Constitution to give the public the right to vote in a referendum on a trade agreement recently signed by Taiwan and China.
Huang made the call after the Central Election Commission (CEC) on Tuesday sent the TSU's referendum proposal on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) to the committee for screening.
The TSU's proposal asks: “Do you agree with the government signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China?”
The wording of the proposal is the same as that used in its first proposal submitted in late April.
Citing Article 14, Section 1.4 of the Referendum Act (公民投票法), the committee on June 3 ruled that the TSU's first proposal invalid. The act states that referendum questions must not have a “contradiction or obvious error in the content of the proposal, thus making the intention of the proposal not understandable.”
The commission on Tuesday said it approved the TSU's latest proposal after initially checking the number of those who co-signed the proposal — 104,293 — and will send the proposal to the review committee for confirmation.
The committee will make a decision on whether the proposal is valid within 30 days.
“[The CEC's ruling] just showed that the Referendum Review Committee violated the law when it used Article 14, Section 1.4 of the Referendum Act to reject the ECFA referendum the first time it was proposed,” Huang said. “That was ridiculous.”
Since the CEC saw no violation, the committee cannot expand its authority by using the same article to reject the proposal, Huang said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS