The referendums scheduled for August can be regarded as a midterm exam for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, in which its core policies of environmental protection and a nuclear energy phase-out are to be scrutinized.
One of the referendum proposals, concerning the relocation of a liquefied natural gas terminal project by state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan away from an algal reef ecosystem off Taoyuan’s coast, had been widely neglected until environmental advocates expanded their strategic engagement with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
For the advocates, engaging with the KMT might be seen as a necessary evil, after they have experienced the DPP, their preferred party, downplaying the issue. As of Friday, their campaign had garnered more than 528,000 signatures — 10 times more than one month ago. The surge was not just due to KMT supporters jumping on the bandwagon, but also due to people who loathed to see DPP supporters dismiss the advocates as campaigners for the sake of campaigning or naive pawns in the hands of the KMT.
If approved by the Central Election Commission, the referendum would on Aug. 28 be juxtaposed against one on restarting the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), which might foreshadow more confrontation over the government’s energy policy. This might also be the reason the government reportedly aims to send DPP Legislator Hung Sun-han (洪申翰), DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲), who have backgrounds in social activism, to communicate with the environmental advocates.
However, negotiations between the government and the advocates would be of no avail if the administration cannot admit its mistakes in the decisionmaking process on the proposed gas terminal.
The Referendum Act (公民投票法) stipulates that, once a referendum on a major policy is passed, the president and government agencies should, but do not have to, take the steps necessary to fulfill the proposal, and no policy should be enacted to counter the proposal within two years. Therefore, the effect of a referendum is limited. It does not determine government policy, but rather offers parties an occasion to rally their supporters.
Nonetheless, the result of a referendum reflects public opinion on the ruling party’s performance. If the DPP believes its own words that Taiwan is a “bastion of democracy,” it should foster policy debates, instead of being satisfied with the self-deceptive illusion that it has “done better than the KMT.”
Environmental advocates in 2018 proposed an alternative location for the gas terminal at the Port of Taipei, but the government did not seriously consider the proposal and instead shrugged it off, saying that revising plans would delay the goal to achieve a “nuclear-free homeland” by 2025.
It is problematic that the public is not given options in terms of power-generation policies, or an integrated timetable on the planned commissioning and decommissioning of power-generation facilities. While many of the nation’s new energy policy projects are carried out in a hurry to meet the goal of a nuclear-free homeland, the government fails to inform the public of potential risks, not to mention that the goal’s legal basis in the Electricity Act (電業法) was scrapped in a referendum in 2018.
For many people, the 10 referendums held simultaneously with the 2018 local elections were a nightmare, as there was no thorough public discussion on the issues and many experienced nasty clashes with family members over divergent opinions.
To prevent such turmoil from recurring, the government should appeal to rational debate, rather than instigating hatred for opponents, and lead the nation toward a better democracy, without the counterproductive DPP-KMT antagonism.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS