A coalition of civic groups yesterday joined calls to enact reforms to the Constitution, adding to a heated discussion on the issue following the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 29 last year.
The newly launched National Constitutional Reform Alliance (NCRA) invited members of the public to propose reforms to the Constitution and expressed their desire to compile a “constitutional reform checklist” by polling public opinion.
The alliance is the second such coalition established to promote public involvement in constitutional reform, following the launch of the Civic Alliance to Promote Constitutional Reform, which was organized by prominent activists and academics, last year.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Led by legislative watchdog Citizen Congress Watch, the new alliance has 31 members representing a broad spectrum of pro-independence and activist groups, including the Northern Taiwan Society, Taiwan Forever, Black Island National Youth Front, Taiwan Rural Front and the New School of Democracy.
At a news conference in Taipei yesterday, Citizen Congress Watch member Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) said that there has been “close communication” between the two coalitions, adding that there was some overlap among their members.
Ku urged politicians from across party lines to observe democratic principles in future reform, in light of diverse proposals for constitutional amendments put forward by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The NCRA announced four goals — to ensure the government holds a national constitutional reform conference before May 20; to formulate a checklist on reform through inviting public participation; to establish a cooperative platform with participation from political parties and civic groups; and to demand all candidates in the presidential and legislative elections next year to pledge their support for a referendum on constitutional reform.
Both reform coalitions have stated that events leading up to the Sunflower movement highlighted the need for a major overhaul to the nation’s political institutions, saying that the legislature failed to counter President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration and its efforts to promote closer ties with China through a proposed cross-strait service trade agreement.
“We see the executive branch of government stifling the legislative branch, causing serious damage to the separation of powers,” Democracy Tautin member and Sunflower movement activist Wu Cheng (吳崢) said.
NCRA members said that reform to emphasize measures of direct democracy — such as lowering the threshold for referendums and recall acts — should be prioritized to counter what they said are problems in representative politics.
Taiwan Forever deputy president Chen Yao-hsiang (陳耀祥) said that the upcoming reforms should streamline government institutions, as many were first established when the Republic of China was still based in China — before the KMT’s retreat to Taiwan in 1949 — thus making many institutions unfit for the nation’s current political situation.
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:
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