20100814 Overhaul of Referendum Act can be a rallying cry

Overhaul of Referendum Act can be a rallying cry

By Huang Kuo-chang 黃國昌
Saturday, Aug 14, 2010, Page 8

In an article the Taipei Times published on Jan. 15, “Referendum law needs to be reformed to be useful,” I wrote that a referendum on US beef imports, the subject of a Consumers’ Foundation petition that had reached the second stage of review after being approved by the Referendum Review Committee, would falter because of the nefarious Referendum Act (公投法).

The article concluded with the warning that “the spirit and purpose of the referendum system can’t be truly implemented unless the Referendum Act is revised, and only when this mess of a law has been fully reformed will there be reason to cheer.”

The petition did fail, as expected. Being proved right, however, does not fill me with any sense of glee. Indeed, I am very much saddened by this continued affront to democracy.

As it stands, the Referendum Act needs to be completely overhauled. Not only does it deprive people of their constitutional right of access to direct democracy, it blocks the realization of those rights. The public is almost universally opposed to this, and not even the government — resistant to the very principle of a direct democracy and wary of the idea of people power — dares to challenge their objections.

How ironic, then, that despite the wave of demands for changes to the Referendum Act — demands that have at one point virtually reached fever pitch — not one single politician has stood up and proactively done anything about the issue.

Obviously, the hands of members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are tied, but what about Democratic Progressive Party legislators?

The reform of the Referendum Act is surely a cause that political activists can rally around. Even the Referendum Review Committee should see it as a window of opportunity, as it presents a chance to block public referendum proposals once and for all. Not once, however, have we seen a serious proposal for review of the act in the legislature and neither has any party set it as one of their reform priorities.

If this appears rather odd, the underlying logic is quite simple: Individual politicians and the leadership of the political parties they belong to are very much aware that their authority derives from electoral democracy. Why push the envelope and start bandying dangerous ideas like “direct democracy” around? Let the public have a crack at people power once, just once, and things will never be the same again.

As far as I am concerned, the committee is already a lost cause, and its rejection on Wednesday of a third proposal to hold a plebiscite on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) came as no surprise. Nor do I see any point in asking them again to respect the public’s right to hold referendums.

Finally, I have absolutely no illusions about the current government doing anything remotely meaningful about reforming the Referendum Act. If we want reform to take place, we have to unite civil society to get support for a referendum on initiating a legal principle for the reform of the act, demanding that the referendum be held jointly with the 2012 legislative elections, so that the next legislature shall be legally bound to seeing the reform through.

We should ask all candidates vying for a legislative seat to first categorically declare their stance on the issue, so that we can keep any politicians that oppose direct democracy out of the legislature.

Huang Kuo-chang is an associate research professor at Academia Sinica’s Institutum Iurisprudentiae and chairman of the Taipei Society.