Lawmakers and government officials yesterday squared off in the legislature over adjustments to thresholds for holding referendums and recalling public officials, culminating in Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators blocking a motion by the opposition asking the administration to submit draft amendments to the two related acts within two months.
As civic groups have continued their push for amendments to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) and the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), Democratic Progressive Party legislators have repeatedly submitted proposals to lower thresholds for holding a vote, but their motions have been blocked at least 128 times by their KMT counterparts, DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said.
The movement appeared to have gained momentum after New Taipei City Mayor and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said that he would be glad to see “rational adjustments” made to the two laws.
However, on Monday, Executive Yuan Secretary-General Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎) reportedly told a KMT caucus meeting that no changes should be made to the two acts.
Chien yesterday denied making such a statement, telling a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee that it was false reporting.
“Rational adjustments can certainly be discussed, such as the thresholds for proposing and petitioning [for a referendum or a recall],” he said.
However, he insisted that the 50 percent voter turnout should be retained to avoid having a minority make decisions for the majority.
Central Election Commission Chairman Liu Yi-chou (劉義周) advised proponents of change to carefully consider the potential impact of referendum results when proposing changes to the thresholds.
Although the Referendum Act is not within the commission’s purview, “as a professor I believe there is a theoretical basis for lowering the threshold to 40 percent, which is half of 80 percent, the highest voter turnout on the country’s record,” Liu said.
As for the DPP’s proposal to abolish the 21-member Referendum Evaluation Committee — which has the right to veto proposals to hold referendums, including a petition last year, backed by 120,000 signatures, to hold a referendum on the operation of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant — Chien said the committee should not be abolished since the Council of Grand Justices’ Interpretation No. 645 has made it clear that the committee is not unconstitutional.
DPP Legislator Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said that is why referendums are compared to a “bird cage” in Taiwan, because there exist countless hurdles for a vote to take place.
Lee questioned Chien’s citation of the grand justices’ interpretation, saying it had ruled that the composition of the committee being proportional to political party representation in the legislature is unconstitutional, “but not that the committee per se is constitutional.”
The DPP legislators’ extempore motion asking the Executive Yuan to submit draft amendments to the two acts within two months was voted down by the KMT lawmakers.
Chien said a public hearing is to be held by the Ministry of the Interior on the threshold question, in which different views could be discussed.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS