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Opposition boycotts
plenary session
By Chris Wang and Lee I-chia / Staff reporters
Attendants collect banners from
the floor of the legislature in Taipei yesterday following all-day clashes
between pan-blue and pan-green parties over construction of the Fourth Nuclear
Power Plant.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
A Legislative Yuan plenary session to
discuss the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) national referendum proposal on
the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮)
went idle again yesterday without any progress as opposition lawmakers continued
to boycott the agenda and a cross-party negotiation failed.
In a repeat of Friday’s session, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Taiwan
Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmakers occupied the podium and boycotted the session,
saying that the government should immediately order a halt to construction of
the plant, rather than pushing through the referendum.
The KMT caucus did not have a chance to have its referendum proposal, initiated
by KMT Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華), discussed on Friday or yesterday, but
again placed it on the plenary agenda for Friday in a meeting of the Procedure
Committee later yesterday, which means that the next plenary session could end
up exactly the same as the previous two if the parties fail to reach a
consensus.
DPP caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) reiterated that the controversial
project should be halted immediately and that the DPP would “engage the national
referendum war head-on” despite the referendum being flawed because of its high
threshold and the “distorted” question the government planned to pose.
“However, we demand that the KMT respect the four-point conclusion of a party
negotiation earlier this session, including freezing the remainder of the budget
of the power plant for last year and this year, no additional budget, a
negotiation on the ‘birdcage referendum’ and the establishment of a nuclear
safety monitoring committee in the legislature,” Ker said, adding that none of
the four had been achieved.
DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said the party opposed “the content of the
referendum, not the referendum itself.”
The TSU had different demands, with caucus whip Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) saying that
the party believed three pieces of legislation — the amendment of the Referendum
Act (公民投票法), the act on promotion of a nuclear-free homeland and an amendment to
the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Control Act (核子反應器設施管制法) — should be discussed in
the plenary session.
The DPP’s proposal to halt the construction of the nuclear power plant and a
People First Party (PFP) proposal to initiate a referendum with the question:
“Do you support the construction and operation of the nuclear power plant if
nuclear safety is assured?” both failed to pass in the Procedure Committee at
noon yesterday.
Outside the legislature, dozens of people dressed in black held up yellow signs
saying, “Halting the [nuclear power plant’s] construction immediately is the
public’s will” as they walked around the legislature before staging a sit-in to
protest the KMT-proposed referendum.
The Green Citizen Action Alliance, urged the 33 pro-nuclear KMT legislators to
give up on passing the proposal and respect the public’s will to abolish the
plant.
The protesters also staged a skit in which a performer wearing a mask of
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) face and dressed in a magician’s costume handed
an envelope that read “70 percent of the public’s will” to another performing
wearing a mask of Lee’s face and dressed like a bunny girl, telling the latter
to put it in a box labeled “birdcage referendum.”
“Don’t use this kind of birdcage referendum, full of traps, to pretend that you
[the government] care about public opinion,” Nuclear-Free Homeland Alliance
executive director Lee Cho-han (李卓翰) said.
“Does the government really want to wait until a disaster occurs before it will
admit that the plant is dangerous?” Gongliao Anti-nuclear Self-Help Association
chairman Wu Wen-chang (吳文樟) said.
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