If Green Party Taiwan won a seat in the legislature, it could open an environment-friendly window to the world for Taiwan, the party’s legislative candidate for Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) said yesterday.
Pan Han-sheng (潘翰聲), who advocates using land set aside for the construction of the controversial Taipei Dome to create a forest park instead, said in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) that part of his electoral campaign would include pushing for a referendum on whether to proceed with construction of the Taipei Dome or abandon the project.
He said reaching the threshold of 10,000 signatures needed to initiate a referendum would pose no problem and could be achieved quickly.
Although the Taipei City Council has unanimously passed a decision to preserve the land on which the dome would be built for a forest park, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) has expedited the environmental evaluation and building permit for Farglory Group and is attempting to let Farglory expand its financial contracting.
When announcing his candidacy, Pan quoted the famous Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who once said: “We must not be afraid to dream … We must be ‘unrealistic dreamers’ who charge forward taking bold steps.”
“Who would have believed that the habitat of the black-faced spoonbill would be preserved thanks to our opposition to the construction of the seventh light naphtha cracker plant [in Yunlin County] and the large steel mill? Who would have believed that by opposing the eighth light naphtha cracker plant and the Kuokuang Petrochemical project we could have saved the pink dolphins?” Pan asked.
“Through sweat and tears, under the rainy skies on Ketagalan Boulevard, we did it,” Pan said.
Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Corp, a subsidiary of CPC Taiwan Corp, had planned to build refineries on coastal wetlands in Dacheng Township (大城), Changhua County, near the mouth of Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪), but has since considered plans to move overseas after the President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration announced in April that it would not support the project.
On the subject of nuclear power, Pan said construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City (新北市) should immediately be halted, while the nation’s three operational power plants should all be shut down.
Pan is also a proponent of levying energy taxes on corporations that are responsible for major pollution, adding that such a move would be beneficial to the public.
National policy cannot simply be based on GDP growth and the environment should come first, Pan said.
Rather than see economic development and short-term gains as a means to satisfy the public, the government should look at the long-term effects, he said.
“My meeting with former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) at the beginning of last month shows he agrees with my views on this issue,” Pan said.
Asked whether his party would work with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the upcoming elections, Pan said there was a possibility that he would launch efforts to initiate dialogue with DPP supporters to win their backing.
“For the moment, I’m only talking with DPP candidates on the possibility of working together on specific issues and I have not talked about inter-party cooperation,” Pan said.
Pan added that his party had not discussed whether it would support DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in next January’s presidential elections.
TRANSLATED BY JAKE CHUNG, STAFF WRITER
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