A new pro-independence coalition yesterday vowed to push referendums on changing the name of the country and repeal the Referendum Law (公投法) next year in conjunction with the presidential election.
The Taiwan National Congress (TNC), formed by over 20 local and international pro-independence groups last Wednesday, said it hopes to push for a referendum on changing the country's official name from the Republic of China to Taiwan and another referendum on invalidating the Referendum Law, because "the high thresholds deprive Taiwanese of the ability to exercise their democratic rights."
The law stipulates that a successful petition for a referendum requires 0.5 percent of eligible voters who took part in the most recent presidential election to sign it -- about 80,000 people. In addition, signatures of 5 percent of the number of voters in the nation, or approximately 800,000 people, are needed before the petition can be screened by the Referendum Review Committee.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
The law also prohibits people from initiating more than one referendum on the same topic within a three year period if the initial referendum fails to win support from the public.
TNC spokesman Ted Lau (劉重義) told a press conference yesterday that the congress would not follow the procedures stipulated in the Referendum Law to mount the two referendums and would declare its referendums successful if more than half of the voters agree.
It also plans to invite international experts to supervise the process and to ensure the referendums are conducted in a fair and transparent manner, Lau said.
Whether such referendums, carried out without reference to the legal mechanisms, would have any meaning if they were passed, Lau could not say but asked "is Taiwan a country governed by the rule of law?"
He said the group's intention was not to make Taiwan a lawless nation as the "Chinese Party [Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT]] have already done that."
Coalition secretary-general Hsu Fu-tong (
Through the referendums, Hsu said, Taiwan could tell the world exactly what the people want.
Lau said their short-term goal is to establish a mechanism whereby the public can have a direct say on major issues and veto legislation that it deems "inappropriate."
Their intermediate goal is to abolish the Legislative Yuan and the ultimate goal is to establish a "new and independent country," he said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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