The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Monday last week held a public hearing about holding national referendums and the Nov. 24 nine-in-one elections on the same day.
Academics attending the hearing agreed that the Referendum Act (公民投票法) clearly stipulates that referendums should be held on the same day as national elections [if proposals are submitted within six months of national polls], and that the commission does not have the administrative discretion to separate the two voting processes.
The hearing was held because the number of referendums to be held in conjunction with the year-end elections has exploded. Including the local elections, some voters might have to cast 15 ballots, and the added election-related duties are overwhelming local governments.
Miaoli County Commissioner Hsu Yao-chang (徐耀昌) fired the first shot, expressing the hope that the referendums could be decoupled from the elections.
Every organization promoting a referendum wants its proposal to be held in conjunction with the local elections because they know that otherwise they would not stand a chance of reaching the threshold to make the result binding, even though it was drastically lowered in last year’s amendments: A quarter of all eligible voters need to vote in favor of a proposal for it to pass, given they outnumber those who vote against.
Looking at voter turnout at elections, the referendum threshold is very low, but if a referendum is not held in conjunction with an election, it nevertheless stands no chance of passing.
In all national referendums that have been held separately from elections so far, total voter turnout did not exceed one-quarter of eligible voters — not even in the 2005 referendum on the seventh constitutional amendment, even though both the Democratic Progressive Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) worked hard to mobilize voters.
It is odd that voter turnout can exceed 80 percent for elections, but will not even reach 20 percent for a referendum. Such a thing would never happen in a normal country.
In a democracy, people are the masters, and they have the power and the responsibility to decide national policy. As there are too many masters, the leader of the executive and the legislators are entrusted by them with the right to represent them by wielding the powers of governance and legislation.
However, if the people thus entrusted violate the wishes of the masters, or if the masters want to express their view on an issue, the masters’ wish should of course be followed. The referendum is there for the masters to express their opinion.
The masters of Taiwan are a bit odd, in that they are interested in choosing people to represent their wishes, but they are not interested in expressing their wishes themselves. What kind of master is that?
The leader of the executive and the legislators are servants of the public, but in Taiwan, public servants have become the masters. If the masters do not express their wishes, it is only natural that public servants will become the masters.
The reason is that Taiwanese have been ruled by a foreign power that has treated them as paid labor for too long. Now they can be the master of the nation, but they still have not had the time to get used to the new situation.
However, it is surprising that while many Taiwanese are naturally pro-independence and identify with Taiwan as an independent nation, they are still unable to fill the role as the nation’s masters and instead let the public servants fill that role.
Chen Mao-hsiung is chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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