Sun, Jun 28, 2009 page3

• Taiwan needs a new constitution: academic

  DEMOCRACY IS INDEPENDENCE A Chinese political analyst said that Taiwan should focus on self-recognition before trying to be recognized by the global community

  • By Ko Shu-ling / STAFF REPORTER
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  Taiwan urgently needs a new constitution because it is already an independent state with sovereignty lying in its people, an expert attending a democratic forum in Taipei said yesterday.

  Ruan Ming (阮銘), a Chinese political analyst and a consultant at the Taiwan Research Institute, said that what Taiwan needed right now was not to gain entry to the UN, but to have its own constitution.

  Self-recognition outweighs international recognition, Yuan said.

  “It is a fact that the international community calls Taiwan ‘Taiwan,’ but President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is very strange. He said he is the president of Taiwan and the president of the Republic of China, but not the president of the Republic of Taiwan,” Yuan said. “But nobody knows where the Republic of China is.”

  Ruan made the remarks during a keynote speech he delivered at a forum organized by the Taiwan New Century Foundation yesterday. The event was to discuss the “return of a new authoritarian system and Taiwan’s democratic development.”

  Ruan urged Taiwanese to initiate a new constitution and mount a referendum to compel the Ma administration to accept it.

  He also called for unity, saying it was the only way to defeat the alliance between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which he said would overcome a divided Taiwan.

  Ruan said that if former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had managed to pass a new constitution during his eight years in office, Taiwanese people “would have been better equipped to deal with Ma now.”

  Chen’s two election victories made the CCP realize that Taiwan was a de facto independent state. What Taiwan lacks now is a new constitution that is reasonable, viable and suitable for the Taiwanese, he said.

  Other issues, such as joining the UN, are secondary, he said, because the UN is a corrupt organization dominated by superpowers.

  Describing Taiwan’s democratic movement as an independence movement, Ruan said Taiwanese were never their own masters before the advent of democratization. They were suppressed by authoritarian regimes or foreign rulers, he said.

  “Independence is the way to free yourself from the double suppressions,” Ruan said.

  Ruan said some people in Taiwan wouldn’t dare to say they were opposed to democracy, but would say they opposed independence. However, a person opposed to independence must be against democracy, freedom and human rights, Ruan said, because an independent, democratic state must not be ruled by a foreign regime.

  Through democratization, Ruan said, Taiwan has ended the rule of a foreign regime and become a free country whose power lies in the people. A free country must be independent, he said.

  Democracy, not nationalism, is the only way forward for Taiwan’s independence campaign, Yuan said, adding that the first person to point the way was former senior presidential adviser Peng Ming-min (彭明敏).

  In the Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation Peng published in 1964, Peng called for a new constitution and independence for Taiwan.
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