Referendum proposals on protecting the Datan algal reefs, barring pork imports containing ractopamine and how to schedule referendums have received enough signatures to advance, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said yesterday.
However, a final decision on whether the proposals would be put to a vote is expected on Friday next week, after a commission review, it said.
If the three proposed referendums are approved, they are expected to be conducted on Aug. 28 alongside a proposal to restart work on the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
The nuclear referendum was approved last year and is to be voted on that day, the CEC said.
Rescue Datan’s Algal Reefs Alliance convener Pan Chong-cheng (潘忠政) last year initiated a referendum proposal aimed at protecting reefs off Datan Village (大潭) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) amid plans to build a CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC) liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal.
It gained 643,371 valid signatures, far surpassing the required level, the commission said.
The proposed referendum would ask: “Do you agree that CPC’s LNG terminal should be relocated from its planned site on the algal reef coast of Datan and its adjacent waters?”
Two referendum questions proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) also cleared the second of two hurdles before being put to a vote.
One of them is aimed at overriding the Democratic Progressive Party government’s policy easing restrictions on imports of pork products with residue of the livestock drug ractopamine, with the petition garnering 461,594 valid signatures.
The proposal was initiated by KMT Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲), which asks: “Do you agree to a total ban on the importation of pork and related products containing leanness enhancing additives (ractopamine and other beta agonists)?”
A referendum initiated by KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) asks: “Do you agree that a referendum should be held concurrently with a national election if it complies with the Referendum Act (公民投票法) and if the election is set to take place within a six-month period following the referendum’s establishment?”
That proposal gained 456,100 valid signatures, the commission said.
There are two hurdles to clear to get a referendum initiative to a vote. The first requires the signatures of 0.01 percent of the eligible voters in the most recent presidential election, which would be 1,931 people based on the 19,311,105 people eligible to vote in last year’s vote. In the second stage, an initiative must collect the signatures of 1.5 percent of eligible voters in the most recent presidential election, or 289,667 people.
For a referendum to pass, at least 25 percent of eligible voters, or about 5 million people, must vote for it, and votes for must exceed votes against.
The KMT yesterday announced that tomorrow it is to hold events in 21 cities and counties to promote its referendum proposals.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods