The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday separately encouraged people to vote in the Dec. 18 referendums, saying that it is an opportunity for people to make their voices heard.
Originally scheduled for today, the Central Election Commission last month postponed the referendums to December.
On the ballot are proposals to protect the algal reefs in Datan Borough (大潭) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音), ban pork imports containing ractopamine, combine referendum votes with national elections, and restart work on the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Among the four items, KMT members initiated the inclusion of banning the importation of pork with traces of ractopamine, and on holding referendums on the same day as national elections.
KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and the nuclear power proponent Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修) yesterday held a joint news conference urging the public to cast their votes “against a despotic government.”
Chiang said that the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) allegation that the KMT was using the referendum issue to promote its Sept. 25 chairperson election was “absurd nonsense.”
Photo: CNA
Separately, TPP Legislative Yuan caucus convener Chiu Chen-yuan (邱臣遠) said that the DPP government is dysfunctional for not being able to deliver COVID-19 vaccines, pandemic relief funds or economic aid to the people.
It has also failed in handling food safety issues by allowing companies to smuggle pork carrying African swine fever into Taiwan, Chiu said at a TPP media conference, and called on the public to make their discontent known on Dec. 18.
TPP Legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) said that the government had failed to provide an environmental impact analysis report for moving a planned liquefied natural gas plant further out to sea.
The government had said it would release the report today.
In related news, DPP spokeswoman Hsieh Pei-fen (謝佩芬) yesterday said that the KMT’s anti-ractopamine campaign risks creating difficulty in COVID-19 prevention.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) and KMT member Jaw Shaw-kang (趙少康), the organizers of the event, said that the campaign consists of two individuals traveling throughout Taiwan in a vehicle and holding online events.
All in-person events have been canceled, they said, adding that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) motorcade is by comparison more liable to jeopardize virus containment.
Additional reporting by Liu Ching-hou
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