Taiwan March and several other groups yesterday “besieged” the Legislative Yuan in Taipei to call for amendments to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) and to mark the anniversary of the end of the occupation of the legislative chamber by Sunflower movement protesters on April 10 last year.
The groups called for a “return” to the Legislative Yuan yesterday and demanded that it “return rights to the people.”
The protesters are calling for changes to the Referendum Act and the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) — as the groups say that the thresholds are too high to make referendums and recalls feasible.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Taiwan March was founded after the Sunflower movement and its founding members mostly consist of the movement’s leaders. It has since been working toward collecting signatures with the aim of “complementing and rectifying the Referendum Act.”
Taiwan March was joined yesterday outside the Legislative Yuan by other activist groups, including the People Rule Foundation, led by founder Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), and the Appendectomy Project team, which initiated a recall campaign against KMT Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元).
The groups and their supporters protested outside the Legislative Yuan with hundreds of people holding hands and shouting slogans such as: “Rectify the Referendum Act, amend the Recall Act, return rights to the people and make people their own masters.”
Demonstrators then arranged themselves into Chinese characters that read “People rule (人民作主),” with People Rule Foundation president Chen Lih-kuei (陳麗貴) saying that as the public are the masters of the nation, and officials and elected representatives are public servants, the public should have the right to be involved in policymaking and to decide whether an elected official should stay in office.
However, Taiwanese are deprived of the right to shape public policy or constrain public servants who are believed to be acting against the public interest, the groups said.
“No recall has ever succeeded and in more than a decade since the Referendum Act was passed into law, not a single referendum case has passed,” Chen said. “Due to the hindrance of these two bad laws, Taiwan’s democracy has never been fully realized.”
Chen said the groups plan to hold another demonstration on Oct. 3 this year to call for rights to be returned to the people, with Lin calling on legislators to make the required amendments to the acts before then.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) demanded during a legislative question-and-answer session yesterday that the Ministry of the Interior table a proposal to lower the thresholds for referendums and recalls within two weeks.
In response, Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) remained noncommittal, saying only that he would ask the ministry to hold public hearings.
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