Anti-casino activists yesterday accused Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) of using the referendum system as a policy instrument, and demanded that the Executive Yuan withdraw the draft bill that would allow the establishment of gambling facilities in Matsu.
Jiang’s remarks on Monday that a national referendum on any issue, including the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), should not circumvent the thresholds enshrined in the Referendum Act (公民投票法) prompted a protest by anti-casino activists yesterday.
“When the government wants to see a referendum pass, a simple majority vote is required, while when it wants to see a referendum fail, there is a very high turnout threshold,” former Green Party spokesperson Pan Han-shen (潘瀚聲) said as a group of activists staged a protest outside the Executive Yuan compound in Taipei.
Pan said that Jiang was lying when he said that controversial issues such as whether to abolish the death penalty or to legalize gambling or the sex trade should all be subject to the threshold of 50 percent of eligible voters under the Referendum Act.
The referendum held in 2009 in Penghu County and another referendum held in 2012 in Matsu County, both seeking residents’ views on whether to allow casino resorts in their hometowns, were decided by a simple majority in line with the Off-shore Islands Development Act (離島建設條例) rather than the Referendum Act, Pan said.
Following the referendum in Matsu that saw 1,795 votes in favor and 1,341 against among 3,164 ballots cast, or a turnout rate of 40.76 percent, the Executive Yuan proposed a draft statute in May last year as a legal basis to allow the building of a casino.
The draft statute is still pending deliberation in the legislature.
Given that Jiang was opposed to the proposal suggested by anti-nuclear activists that a referendum on the nuclear issue be decided by simple majority because that the result could be unconvincing, the 2012 referendum in Matsu should be deemed invalid and the draft act on casinos should be revoked, Pan said.
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
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
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