20100418 Beware of referendums: ex-leader

Beware of referendums: ex-leader

ADVICE FROM ABROAD: The former Latvian president said the fate of referendums was often the result of misinformation, making it an ‘insecure instrument’

By Shih Hsiu-chuan
STAFF REPORTER, WITH CNA
Sunday, Apr 18, 2010, Page 3

All countries are advised to use referendums cautiously because in some cases people tend to be misinformed, former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga said earlier this week before concluding a weeklong visit in Taiwan.

Vike-Freiberga, 72, visited Taiwan amid heated local debate on whether to hold a referendum on a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China.

While the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government insists a referendum on an ECFA is unnecessary, as it ellegedly does not pertain political matters, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has advocated holding a referendum before deciding whether to sign the cross-strait trade pact.

The DPP and other organizations claim that since Taiwan’s counterpart in the pact, China, has not ruled out annexing Taiwan by force, it is necessary to hold a referendum on the matter.

In a joint interview with Taiwanese media on Tuesday, Vike-Freiberga referred to a failed ratification of the European Constitution in France in 2005, in which French voters did not vote in support of the Constitution — not because they did not support the treaty, she said, but because they did not like the government led by then-president Jacques Chirac.

The failed first referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland in 2008, she added, was a classical case of misinformation because under Irish law the government was not allowed to promote its policy.

The opposition gave the electorate false information and successfully prevented the passage of the referendum.

“This is the danger in referendums ... It’s very easy to mislead [voters],” she said.

“Psychologically, this potential for misinformation in anticipation of a referendum makes it, I think, an insecure instrument for finding out the true position of the people,” she said.

Vike-Freiberga was elected president of Latvia in 1999.

In 2003, she was re-elected for a second term. During her tenure, she played a crucial role in leading Latvia’s entrance into NATO and the EU.

Asked by reporters to draw on Latvia’s experience in EU integration, she said Latvia benefited from the EU’s Structural Funds to build up its economy, which was in ruins under Soviet occupation, as Latvia had been built into the system of the Soviet centrally planned economy for over 50 years.

“It had been done intentionally with the hope that none of the countries in the periphery would ever, if they wish, become independent, they would not be independent economically,” she said.

Latvia, which declared independence from the Soviet Union through a referendum in 1991, became a member of the EU in 2004 following nine years of negotiations.

“It’s a gradual integration. We had nine years in preparations … but there are also disadvantages [to economic integration],” she said.

“When you join a larger whole, you cannot protect your own things as well as you could before. The counterpoint is [that] you have access to a huge market,” she said.

Saying that access to the huge Chinese market, which “many people are standing in line to get access to,” would be an advantage for Taiwan, Vike-Freiberga added that problems of international trade would ensue because of “competition with cheap labor.”

“This is what has happened in Europe as a whole, the European workers … get salaries [that are] so much higher than mainland Chinese workers that it makes it so difficult for them to compete [for jobs],” she said.

She said the only solution has always been that the country “needs to go for higher value-added, for innovation, for high technology, for intellectual property, for things that do not depend on quantity and small margins of profits, [and that] the whole economy then has to be reorientated.”

On whether to liberalize agricultural trade, Vike-Freiberga suggested countries look beyond its economic aspects when they adhere to the laissez-faire approach in pursuit of international trade and market access objectives, thinking instead its strategic and humanist values.

“Most of us are now linked to a globally interconnected system,” she said.

“Everything is becoming globalized. But to some extent, my personal feeling is that each country should produce some foods and have some agriculture,” Vike-­Freiberga said.

Very few countries in the world achieve self-sufficiency in food production to feed themselves, she said. “Suppose that something happened, you are cut off.”

Vike-Freiberga, who has previously been nominated to run for the position of secretary-general of the UN and for president of the European Council, declined to comment any further on Taiwan’s political relations and economic initiatives with China.

However, she said she saw nothing but a promising economic future for Taiwan because the country has always been at the forefront of innovation, development of high technology and re-orienting itself to an economy of high value-added products, which she described as “the only way of survival in a modern world of free trade.”