On Monday last week, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) raised the possibility of a peace agreement between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. On Thursday, he elaborated on the idea by allowing the possibility of a referendum on whether a peace agreement should be signed.
However, Ma and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have long done their best to stop referendums from being held. In light of this, it was only to be expected that the opposition parties would react to Ma’s statements by accusing him of merely trying to win votes in the presidential election.
Ma is also in the habit of reneging on his campaign promises and then trying to justify his failures, or otherwise just ignoring doubts raised by commentators and the public. Given his reputation, he has his work cut out if he expects to convince the public, especially when it comes to the part about holding a referendum. However, the doubts currently being expressed about the Ma government’s latest pronouncements are not centered on whether it would ever hold a referendum on a peace agreement. Rather, people are asking whether Ma is telling the truth and whether he would once more renege on his promise.
These developments reflect that the demand that all important cross-strait agreements should be subject to mandatory referendums, as proposed by numerous civic groups since the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), has gained widespread support among the public.
It also shows that even Ma and the KMT, who are notorious for opposing referendums, have been forced to at least appear to seriously consider the necessity of holding referendums about important cross-strait agreements.
Whether they are sincere about it is, of course, another matter and the biggest question at the moment is to what extent, if any, their policy pronouncements can be treated as credible.
The most direct way to allay such doubts would be to go straight ahead and make a law to the effect that all important cross-strait agreements be subject to referendums and, at the same time, to rectify the much-criticized Referendum Act (公民投票法), which places so many restrictions and stumbling blocks in the way of referendums that people call it the “birdcage referendum law.” As to what agreements should be classified as “important,” there is probably room for discussion.
However, what is quite clear is that if a peace agreement has to be put to a referendum, then it follows a minore ad maius that any cross-strait agreement that is even more important or influential than a peace agreement must also be made subject to a referendum.
That would, of course, include any matter or agreement that would alter our nation’s existing state of sovereign independence.
Are Ma and the KMT sincerely willing to accept the demand that all important cross-strait agreements be subject to referendums, or are they just using it as a way of mitigating the impression that they are bent on stemming pro-independence tendencies and moving step-by-step toward unification?
If they are sincere, there is no need to wait until after next year’s presidential and legislative elections to do something about it. Instead, KMT legislators should go ahead and propose a draft law that makes all cross-strait agreements subject to referendums, so that the legislature can deliberate on the bill and pass it into law within the current legislative session.
Huang Kuo-chang is a research professor at Academia Sinica’s Institutum Iurisprudentiae.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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