The Formosa Alliance plans to hold a rally in Taipei on Oct. 20 to protest against Chinese bullying and promote Taiwan’s right of self-determination.
The group yesterday also called for the public to support its proposed Taiwanese independence referendum.
The Referendum Act (公民投票法), amended in December last year, lowered the support threshold for referendum proposals and signature drives to pass, but limitations on constitutional amendments and the definition of a sovereign territory were left untouched, alliance convener Kuo Pei-hung (郭倍宏) said yesterday.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The problem with the definition of sovereign territory stems from the language used in the Constitution — “Sovereign territory of the Republic of China will comply with its inherent boundaries.”
The language tacitly includes China as part of the ROC’s sovereign territory, leading to the pro-independence camp — of which the Formosa Alliance is a part — seeking to remove that clause from the Constitution.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) support of such limitations deprives Taiwanese of their chance to determine the future of Taiwan, Kuo said.
The alliance plans to hold a protest in front of the Presidential Office Building to demand that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and DPP legislators push for another amendment to the Referendum Act to allow Taiwanese to vote for their own future, Kuo said.
“We hope everyone will stand with us and seize the chance for Taiwan to become a normal nation,” he said.
New Power Party (NPP) Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said his party believes that defined territory, the sovereignty of the nation and the name of the nation should all be issues that a referendum can be held on.
“These are rights that people are owed,” Huang said, adding that the NPP would be proposing an amendment at the next legislative session to address this concern.
Meanwhile, Sheng Ching-kai (沈清楷) the convener of the Tokyo Olympics for Taiwan Name Rectification Action Working Group, said that the group’s proposed referendum calling for Taiwan’s team to participate in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics under the name “Taiwan” instead of “Chinese Taipei,” has collected 400,000 signatures.
Campaigners must collect more than 280,000 signatures in the second stage to launch a referendum.
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