A petition aimed at launching a referendum against a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal project near an algal reef off the coast of Taoyuan has passed the second-stage threshold for official consideration, having collected 296,697 signatures as of Sunday.
Enough signatures had been collected to pass the threshold of 289,667 required by the Central Election Commission, the Rescue Datan’s Algal Reefs Alliance said yesterday.
Alliance convener Pan Chong-cheng (潘忠政), who initiated the petition last year, said that organizers could collect more than 350,000 signatures by today to ensure that there are enough votes to take the referendum proposal to the final stage.
The alliance said it hopes to collect 450,000 signatures by Wednesday next week and draw attention to the issue ahead of a referendum on Aug. 28 on the state-run utility CPC Corp, Taiwan’s LNG project off the coast of the city’s Guanyin District (觀音).
The project endangers the 7,000-year-old algal reefs there, the alliance said.
Based on the Referendum Act (公民投票法), the second stage of a proposed referendum requires the signatures of 1.5 percent of eligible voters in the most recent presidential election.
For a referendum to pass, 25 percent of eligible voters must vote “yes.”
Last year, 19.31 million voters were eligible to vote in the presidential election.
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