Three days after a review committee rejected its proposal to hold a referendum on the government’s proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China, an increasingly angry Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) yesterday issued a statement asking members of the committee to apologize and revisit their decision.
“The Referendum Review Committee must publicly apologize within three days and reopen their deliberations or the TSU will be suing [committee members that voted against the proposal] for misconduct and exceeding their authority,” the statement quoted TSU Chairperson Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) as saying.
The TSU provided documentation on Friday challenging the committee’s decision that the TSU referendum proposal was invalid under Article 14, Section 1.4 of the Referendum Act (公民投票法).
The act states that referendum questions must not have a “contradiction or obvious error in the content of the proposal, thus making the intention of the proposal not understandable.”
A letter, shown by the TSU, dated May 5 from the Central Elections Commission (CEC) to Huang had stated that a CEC meeting held one day earlier did not find a conflict between the referendum proposal and any parts under Article 14, Section 1 of the act.
Rebutting statements by CEC officials that the referendum review committee had the final say on referendum proposals, Huang said the Executive Yuan had already stated that the CEC was responsible for determining whether proposals fulfilled Article 14, Section 1.
On Saturday, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) quoted an unnamed CEC official as saying that the CEC is only responsible for “a formality review,” while the review committee was the agency responsible for a “substantive review.”
Backing Huang’s statement, the TSU yesterday provided documents showing that a public notice by the Executive Yuan, the governing body of the Referendum Act, said on April 16, 2004, that it was giving the CEC authority to process decisions on all parts of Article 14.
The public notice with the serial number 0930083141-A said: “Effective April 16, 2004, the [Executive Yuan] designates the CEC to process items under Article 9, Section 1 and Article 14 under the Referendum Act.”
Huang said the notice proves that the review committee’s decision on Thursday “was not only entirely illegal, but the referendum review committee had already infringed on the CEC’s authority.”
He also repeated earlier calls yesterday saying the TSU was ready for a drawn out battle with the courts and that the opposition party would go as far as asking for a constitutional interpretation to ensure that an ECFA proposal could be put to a public vote.
In response to the TSU’s criticism, CEC Secretary-General Teng Tien-yu (鄧天祐) said that according to the Referendum Act, both the CEC and the Referendum Review Committee have the authority to review a referendum proposal.
“We’ve done our part and approved [the referendum proposal on whether the government should sign an economic cooperation framework agreement with China], and forwarded it to the Referendum Review Committee,” Teng said. “The Referendum Review Committee has every power endowed by the Referendum Act to make their own decision.”
He said the CEC makes more than just a “superficial review” of the referendum proposal.
“We worked with household registration offices to make sure each signature endorsing the referendum proposal is a valid one, we counted the number of signatures, and checked that everything meets the requirements as stipulated in the law,” Teng said. “It’s after all these checks that we approved the proposal and forwarded it to the Referendum Review Committee.”
“If the TSU thinks there’s a problem, they can certainly appeal it or do whatever they wish according to the law,” he said.
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
RSS