Central Election Committee (CEC) officials should be held responsible for wrongful conduct and negligence over a referendum petition calling on the government to activate the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and use it for commercial energy generation, Control Yuan members said yesterday.
Control Yuan members Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), Yang Fang-ling (楊芳玲) and Chao Yung-ching (趙永清) concluded that the CEC did not follow proper oversight procedures and rushed to approve a signature drive launched by nuclear power proponent Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修) to make it a referendum question to be voted on next year.
Tien said that among the CEC’s flaws was the proposed referendum question: “Do you agree to restart the deactivated Fourth Nuclear Power Plant for it to generate electricity for commercial operation?”
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The supporting documentation for the referendum provided by Huang was full of errors and the CEC failed to hold public hearings on the issue as required, Tien said.
The CEC in December last year said that Huang’s petition had reached the legal threshold for a referendum to be held.
“The No. 4 nuclear power project has been shelved and to restart it would mean to repeal a major government policy decision,” Tien said.
“Even if completed, it would still require an operating license to generate electricity for commercial use, which would initiate another major new government policy,” she said.
“Therefore this referendum question combines two major government policy decisions. According to the Referendum Act (公民投票法), two policy decisions cannot be combined into one referendum question for people to vote on,” she said.
“Second, the CEC was seriously negligent, as Huang’s submitted question was very similar to the one submitted by Sung Yun-fei (宋雲飛) in 2018, which was different by only one word, and one added a colon for punctuation. CEC officials in a meeting decided that there was no need to hold public hearings, as it had already done so for Sung’s submission,” Tien said.
It was a major flaw, since there were major differences in the reasons given in the accompanying documents provided by Sung and Huang, and “the public hearings on Sung’s question did not invite the stakeholders involved in the issue, which was contrary to positive progress for our democratic society,” she added.
“CEC officials have erred in contravention of the Referendum Act and lack proper judgement. They also lack competency, as that they did not see a need to hold public hearings on an issue that requires a high level of professional knowledge. The CEC officials have failed in their duties,” Tien said.
Yang in representing the Control Yuan’s report said the conclusion might not affect the referendum question, which, according to procedures, could be put to a vote in August next year, pending a further review and decision by the CEC.
“Through this report, we hope to let the public know that this referendum question has quite a lot of problems and for people to better understand the issues associated with it,” she said.
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