In a democracy, public servants — by definition — are employees hired by taxpayers to serve public interests. They exist as agents to attend to the collective concerns of the people, not the other way around, such as acting in their own interests, hijacking the people’s rights and deciding for the people what they can ask the civil service to do and not to do.
Such absurdity appears to be brewing in Taiwan as an appeal petitioned by about 200,000 people is now on the brink of being rejected by a handful of public servants who are supposed to serve them, thanks to the birdcage Referendum Act (公民投票法), which is known for its unreasonably high threshold needed to launch a referendum drive and the establishment of a so-called Referendum Review Committee that screens people’s voices.
The Referendum Act stipulates that a referendum proposal, after completing the first stage of collecting signatures from 0.5 percent of eligible voters in the last presidential election, must obtain approval from the Referendum Review Committee before it can proceed to the next stage of collecting signatures from 5 percent of that same number. It must then pass a second review before making it to the polling stations.
In accordance with the law, the Executive Yuan’s 21-member Referendum Review Committee is slated to meet tomorrow and decide whether a proposed question put forward by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) on the government’s planned trade pact with China conforms to the requirements for a valid referendum proposal.
Citing anonymous sources, local media yesterday reported that the committee, in line with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) stance on the planned cross-strait trade pact, is likely to reject the TSU’s proposed referendum, which asks the question: “Do you agree that the government should sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China?”
Leading up to tomorrow’s committee meeting, there has also been a media report quoting anonymous sources from the Ma administration and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as saying that China has privately expressed its views to Taiwan on the proposed ECFA referendum, saying that holding such a public vote would have “impacts on cross-strait developments.”
While it comes as no surprise that authoritarian China dislikes the people having their voices heard, it would be an utter sham on the part of the Ma administration if it were to toe Beijing’s line and reject the TSU’s proposed referendum. It would be equally despicable if the Referendum Review Committee likewise toes Ma’s political line and chooses to rebuff the voices of the 200,000 people its members serve.
Ma himself has praised Taiwan’s democracy many times; what better way to demonstrate Taiwan’s democracy than having its citizens take part in developing national policy through a direct vote? After all, what is the Ma administration afraid of? If an ECFA with Beijing were indeed as beneficial as Ma and his government officials say, wouldn’t a referendum on the planned pact serve as a great opportunity for Ma to prove himself correct and his critics wrong?
All eyes are now on the Referendum Review Committee and it is to be hoped that the committee will act in the interests of the public rather than working to muzzle people’s voices and leave a stain on the nation’s record in consolidating its democracy.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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