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Protesters demand referendum
By Rich Chang
STAFF REPORTER, WITH STAFF WRITER
Sunday, May 30, 2010, Page 3
Braving the rain, a group of protesters yesterday marched
from Taipei’s Longshan Temple (龍山寺) to the Executive Yuan calling on the
government not to prevent the rightful expression of popular will on a proposed
cross-strait trade pact through a referendum.
The Executive Yuan’s Referendum Review Committee is slated to convene a meeting
on June 3 to decide whether a referendum question proposed by the Taiwan
Solidarity Union (TSU) conforms to the requirements of a referendum proposal.
The TSU has proposed the question: “Do you agree that the government should sign
an economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] with China?”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government believes an ECFA is necessary to
keep Taiwan from being economically marginalized as other countries sign
free-trade agreements with China. It hopes to ink the deal with Beijing by the
end of next month.
Critics say that workers and industries will suffer once cheaper Chinese
products flood the market, that Taiwan’s sovereignty will be undermined and that
the deal makes Taiwan too economically dependent on China.
PROPOSAL
People Matters, the group that organized the march yesterday, asked the
committee not to reject the proposal as it did last August after a similar drive
by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), on the grounds that its referendum
question was based on a hypothetical situation.
Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), a member of the group, said the KMT government should not
reject a referendum proposal that has garnered more than 100,000 signatures.
SIGNATURES
The Referendum Act (公民投票法) stipulates that for the first phase of a referendum
drive, an individual or organization must collect signatures from 0.5 percent of
the number of qualified voters in the last presidential election — which was
around 80,000 people in this case.
Of the nearly 200,000 signatures the TSU has already collected, 110,000 petition
forms were delivered to the Central Election Commission last month for review
and then forwarded to the Referendum Review Committee for further deliberation.
The protesters called on the government to dismiss the Referendum Review
Committee and accept the right to a referendum.
A separate rally against an ECFA was also held last night by the Taiwan Society.
The rally featured stalls set up on Liberty Square selling “Made in Taiwan”
produce and industrial products — part of a campaign to draw attention to the
fact that an ECFA with China would jeopardize local industries and flood Taiwan
with sub-standard products from China.
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