Taiwan's first national referendum was held concurrently with the presidential election on March 20. The two referendum questions failed to pass, as fewer than half of eligible voters participated.
After the presidential election, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) alliance with the People First Party (PFP) refused to accept the election result. They staged a near month-long protest and attracted much public attention, while serious discussion on the referendum issue was mostly ignored.
After the March 20 election, the referendum issue was only brought up three more times. First, the KMT and PFP claimed to be pushing for a referendum for a special investigation committee on the shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) when the December legislative elections are held.
The issue was mentioned again when they attacked the holding of the referendum in tandem with the presidential election, believing it would skew the vote. Finally, in President Chen Shui-bian's inaugural speech, he changed his promise of making a new Constitution through a referendum by 2006 to amending the Constitution by an ad hoc National Assembly and "incorporating into the Constitution the people's right to referendum on constitutional revision."
Although the referendum was rendered invalid due to a lack of participation, this does not mean that the nation's first national referendum was a failure. Judging from the number of its participants -- in the face of a boycott by the opposition camp -- about 45 percent of the eligible voters took part in the referendum. The number of people who participated is higher than the total amount of votes cast for the Chen-Lu ticket, and the turnout was much higher than in many European countries which held referendums at one time or another. In this sense, the referendum was successful, and it was only the excessively high cutoff rate required to make the referendum valid that caused it to fail.
But the implementation of the referendum was not without its problems. From the time it was proposed to when it was finally put before the voters, public discussion and debate on the referendum was insufficient. One the one hand, the public focused too much on the connection between the referendum and the presidential election and viewed it from an electoral perspective.
On the other hand, various factors delayed the question-making process, so the public did not have sufficient time to discuss the meaning of the questions.
Since voters did not have enough time, televised political debates on the issue were certainly the most important way for us to understand it. The design of the public debates on the referendum, however, was the same as the presidential candidate debates, and failed to focus on either side of the issue.
The criteria for determining who would participate in the debates also turned into a stage for pundits and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum to cheapen the issues with showy grandstanding.
The various technical flaws during the voting process must also be addressed. The Central Election Commission (CEC) to divided the presidential election and the referendum into two stages to avoid confusion. But receiving a ballot for the election and a ballot for the referendum at the same time is not unprecedented.
Further, the casting of votes into the wrong polling boxes and the casting of invalid votes are two completely different problems. Since many actually complained that the two-stage voting process was confused, logistics of the election must be examined to understand whether such complaints were in fact reasonable. This examination should also serve as an opportunity to design a voting process that is simpler and more easy to understand.
Moreover, those who know about Taiwan's political situation know that it is necessary to amend the Referendum Law (
Whether the failure of a referendum equals a veto of the issue at hand is questionable. Of course other factors must be examined, such as the procedure involved in initiating a referendum as well as the relationship between this form of direct democracy and our elected representatives.
For those who care about Taiwan's democracy, the point is whether this experience is helpful for the nation's political process. In light of the result, it can be said that the referendum did not arouse issues contentious enough to motivate a minimum amount of voters to participate in it.
The voting process was peaceful, and people eventually accepted the results. Most did not question the legitimacy of the referendum, although some social elites claimed that it was a violation of the law.
Thus, the referendum was successful in that it is now part of the country's political language, just like general elections. Although the process was problematic, the holding of such a vote contributed to Taiwan's political culture by breaking the taboo of holding referendums.
Chen's re-election shows that "Taiwan consciousness" has become part of the nation's mainstream political culture. The referendum also ensured the legitimacy of direct democracy in Taiwan, and therefore served its ultimate purpose. A more complete "Taiwan consciousness" and more direct democratic system are the fundamental pillars of the nation.
Taiwan's move toward direct democracy looks better than ever. It is an urgent task for those who care about the country's democratic development to seriously review the experience of the March 20 referendum.
Lai I-chung is the director of foreign policy studies at the Taiwan Thinktank.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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