While most Taiwanese were busy yesterday eating zongzi and heading for the beach, Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) officials spent the national holiday promoting a petition for their new referendum proposal.
“The Dragon Boat festival was originally a happy day for us,” TSU Chairperson Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said as he handed out petition forms to curious onlookers passing by the petition station near Songshan Airport.
“But once we think about the impact that an economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] will have on Taiwan, we just don’t have the heart to take a day off,” he said.
Helping out at the TSU’s petition station is the latest move by the 73-year-old Huang, who has made it a personal priority to hold a public referendum over the controversial agreement the government could sign with China in the coming weeks.
Huang, a close confidante of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and minister of the interior under Lee, said he was worried that the tariff reduction agreement would damage Taiwanese industries and negatively affect the labor market amid an influx of cheaper goods from China.
As both Taiwan and China are members of the WTO, he said that under WTO regulations, both sides would have to liberalize between 90 percent and 95 percent of cross-strait trade, including agricultural items, in 10 years if a trade agreement like an ECFA were signed.
“That’s why President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) can say he won’t open agricultural goods during his term in office,” Huang said.
Huang says a nationwide public referendum must be held before the agreement becomes valid, a move that has so far drawn stiff opposition from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and government officials.
“What we are doing … is all for protecting the rights of the next generation. It’s why we must step up our support for an ECFA referendum,” Huang said.
Although his efforts have been broadly recognized by pro-independence groups and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), they are still a far cry from achieving Huang’s main objective — a referendum.
Despite gathering as many as 200,000 signatures earlier this year in support of a referendum asking voters whether they agreed the government should sign an ECFA with China, the proposal was rejected earlier this month by the Referendum Review Committee.
That decision is under appeal, with the TSU citing government documents that show a possible contradiction between the verdict and an earlier ruling by the Central Election Commission, under which the committee falls.
This, however, has not stopped the TSU from launching another similar referendum proposal on an ECFA, in addition to a second referendum pitch aimed at phasing out the review committee.
“The review committee is a public servant. [It] should be aggressively protecting the people’s right to a referendum, not limiting it,” Huang said.
Saying that Taiwanese should be in control and the review committee “must be scrapped,” Huang said the TSU would not give up in its efforts to hold a referendum on an ECFA.
“Everybody should join in on our efforts to hold an ECFA referendum in addition to also phasing out the review committee. Let’s fight for the future of our next generation,” he said.
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