Using their dominance in the legislature, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) on Tuesday forced the legislature's Procedure Committee to pass a draft amendment to Article 17 of the Referendum Law (
To protest the KMT and PFP legislators' attempt to expand the legislature's power, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) walked out of the committee meeting. Presidential Office officials said the draft would turn the "bird cage"referendum law into an "iron cage" law.
Proposed by KMT Legislator Kao Yu-jen (
The legislature has become a constitutional monster since the abolishment of the National Assembly. That is why the pan-green camp has moved several times to halve the number of legislative seats, yet the move has been blocked by pan-blue legislators.
With the KMT and the PFP trying to boost their power by placing all referendum powers in the hands of the legislature, they are openly trampling on Taiwan's democratic reform.
They claim they are proposing the amendment in order to highlight the illegality of President Chen Shui-bian's (
If, as the blue camp claims, Chen's defensive referendum really is a matter of campaign manipulation aimed at attracting votes by playing to voters' Taiwan awareness, then the blue camp's referendum plan is even more of an attempt at manipulation designed to win votes from Taipei and Keelung. The blue camp knows it is weak in southern Taiwan. Its leaders are therefore trying to establish a power base in northern Taiwan. They explain their campaign manipulation by saying that the integration referendum movement has been initiated by the public and thus is a legal referendum.
In view of the KMT's and the PFP's behavior, voters do not know what to say. Regardless, even the KMT-PFP alliance wants to launch a referendum. Although the referendum issues are different, and though they are proposed by different political camps, it shows that referendums have already become a constitutional mechanism widely accepted by both government and the opposition. This is a significant victory in the development of Taiwan's constitutional reform, and means that there is no turning back on the issue of referendums.
Regardless of whether voters support the integration of Taipei City, Taipei County, and Keelung City, we are pleased to see that the KMT and the PFP are proceeding with their plan in accordance with the Referendum Law. This newspaper's pro-referendum stance does not change as referendum initiators change.
Nevertheless, we have to alert readers and ask them to condemn the blue camp's hypocritical position on the referendum issue. On the one hand, they cook up charges against Chen's referendum. On the other hand, they plan to hold a referendum to attract votes. Let us hope readers can see through this.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017