Fri, Apr 25, 2014 page1

• Fasting not the solution: premier

  • By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff reporter
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  Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) yesterday said former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) hunger strike to compel the government to halt construction on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant has created a “disturbance.”

  Jiang said the only way to resolve the issue of whether to stop construction of the plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City, was to put it to a vote according to the Referendum Act (公民投票法). He also rejected calls by the DPP and many others to revise the law so that a simple majority vote could decide the issue.

  Jiang said that everyone holds Lin in high esteem because of his contributions to the nation’s democratization, and “we hope he will not make his demands in a way that endangers his health.”

  

  Yellow ribbons are tied on trees in a park next to the Gikong Presbyterian Church in Taipei where former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Lin Yi-xiong is conducting a hunger strike.

  Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times

  “Since a referendum in a democracy is a mechanism that reflects public opinion in the most direct way, we will not be swayed by any other action by any group or person on the issue,” Jiang said. “This is why we are worried about Lin’s action.”

  “We cannot bear to see him like this,” Jiang added.

  Lin began an indefinite hunger strike on Tuesday in protest at the nearly completed plant, saying he was forced into the action because the government has ignored public opinion.

  The statement Jiang read to Cabinet members at the weekly meeting yesterday indicated that he would not to concede to either the demand that construction on the plant be halted or that the Referendum Act be amended to address aspects widely perceived as flaws that prevent the public from deciding on the issue.

  Under the Referendum Act, at least 50 percent of eligible voters, or about 9 million, need to participate in the vote, with half of the voters casting a “yes” vote for the referendum to be valid.

  Strictly speaking, “the referendum threshold is not unusually high,” Jiang said.

  The reason the Executive Yuan is opposed to the DPP’s proposal for the legislature to enact a special statute that would allow a referendum on the nuclear power plant to pass through a simple majority is that people would demand that other controversial issues be dealt with in the same way, he said.

  People have been demanding that gambling, the cross-strait service trade agreement and the abolition of the death penalty also be put to a referendum, Jiang said.

  The premier urged Lin and the DPP to turn to democratic mechanisms to resolve the dispute.

  “In a mature, democratic society, people have different views on various issues and sometimes their assertions can be strongly worded. What makes a democracy valuable is that it provides mechanisms to have the disputes resolved,” he said.

  Because of the deep disagreements between anti-nuclear activists and the government over the Referendum Act, a suggestion has been made that Constitutional Interpretation No. 520 — which deals with major policy changes — be applied.

  The Council of Grand Justices handed down the interpretation in 2001 in response to a decision made the previous year by the then-DPP administration to halt construction of the nuclear power plant. It stipulated that the Executive Yuan should have secured majority support in the legislature rather than making the decision unilaterally because the project’s budget had passed the legislature.

  Jiang reiterated the Executive Yuan’s position that the dispute be resolved via a referendum rather than by a vote in the legislature, saying that the former would allow ordinary people to express their views on the issue.

  “I don’t believe that Taiwanese would accept a decision on the plant made by the legislature,” Jiang said on Tuesday when asked about the issue by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) at a question-and-answer session.
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