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TSU moves to scrap
referendum review
FOREGONE CONCLUSION? The Referendum Review
Committee will review the TSU’s referendum proposal to abolish the committee for
ignoring people’s rights
By Loa Iok-sin / Staff Reporter
Taiwan Solidarity Union Chairman
Huang Kun-huei, center, and other party officials take boxes, which contain more
than 90,000 endorsements of the party’s referendum proposal to abolish the
Referendum Review Committee, to the Central Election Commission in Taipei
yesterday.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Calling the Referendum Review Committee a
“monster” that destroys people’s right to plebiscites, Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU)
Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) submitted a referendum proposal, endorsed by more
than 94,000 citizens, to abolish the committee.
Bringing boxes containing 94,184 endorsements for the TSU referendum proposal,
Huang, along with several party officials, handed the petition to the Central
Election Commission yesterday morning.
“Since April last year, I’ve initiated three referendums on the Economic
Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), and each time it was rejected by the
Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee,” Huang told reporters outside the
commission’s office.
“Referendums are a right of the people protected by the Constitution and the
committee has apparently become a monster that places its own opinion over that
of the people and deprives people of their right to express their own opinions,”
he said.
Huang said more than 30,000 people endorsed his initiatives for a referendum on
whether the people approved of the government’s plan to sign the ECFA, yet, the
government didn’t seem to care about the voices of those tens of thousands of
citizens.
“This is why I’ve initiated yet another referendum proposal on abolishing the
Referendum Review Committee and I urge the members of the committee to refrain
from reviewing the proposal to avoid conflict of interests,” Huang said.
He said that according to the Referendum Act (公民投票法), the committee’s duty is to
assist the public in holding referendums, “but it has become a tool for the
ruling party to block the nation’s citizens from expressing their views through
referendums — it certainly should be abolished.”
According to the Referendum Act, an initiator of a referendum must submit the
proposal with signatures from 0.5 percent of the number of eligible voters in
the previous presidential election — which now stands at a little more than
86,000 — in the first phase. After the committee approves the proposal, the
initiator may proceed with a second-phase endorsement process to get signatures
from 5 percent of the number of eligible voters from the previous presidential
election.
The Central Election Commission accepted the proposal from the TSU and will have
the Referendum Review Committee complete the first-phase review process within
30 days before informing the TSU to begin the second-phase endorsement process.
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