Legislators across party lines yesterday expressed opposition to a proposal by Huang Wu-hsiung (黃武雄), a retired professor and husband of Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬), that the nation maintain the “status quo” for the next 50 years and write the development into the Constitution.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), head of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, criticized Huang’s proposal, saying that it would limit the development of cross-strait relations.
“[The government decided to pursue] no unification with China and no de jure independence in a bid to maintain the balance between Taiwan and China. We don’t have to write [the policy] into the Constitution because if we did, this would impose restrictions on our own development,” Wu said.
Wu’s comment came after Huang launched an online campaign recently to garner signatures in support of his call for a “50-year maintenance of peace.”
In an article titled Searching for a Time of Peace, Huang expressed concerns about the perennial wrangling between the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
He suggested that the nation should seek to reach a consensus with China to “jointly propose concrete measures to maintain the ‘status quo’ for the next 50 years.”
“[Taiwanese] should seek to put an end to the confrontation between the two [political] opposites under the current framework of our sovereignty and to ensure the stability of the nation, a functioning society and the development of Taiwan. [We] should also cooperate to fight for peace and our survival over the next 50 years,” Huang said.
Huang proposed that a referendum should be held to seek whether to write “50 years of ‘status quo,’ no unification with China and no de jure independence” into the Constitution.
The nation should also form a consensus to “demilitarize” Taiwan and include the consensus in the Constitution, Huang said.
“With the articles written into the Constitution as the foundation, [we] then could demand that Taiwan, China and the US sit down, negotiate and sign a 50-year cross-strait peace agreement and allow Taiwan to join international organizations with names such as ‘Taiwan in Transition’ or ‘ROC [Republic of China] in Transition,’” he said.
“Taiwan’s sovereignty can be left to the generation [of Taiwanese] 50 years from now to decide. People in our generation have too many unresolved problems and should not worry about this complicated issue,” he said.
“Let’s honestly admit that people in our generation do not have the wisdom and ability to resolve the unification-independence controversy,” he said.
Wu shrugged off Huang’s suggestion, saying that the future of Taiwan is being decided by its people.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said the cross-strait issue was high politicized and sensitive and could not be resolved by an Internet signature drive.
Even if such a peace treaty were written into the Constitution, it would have no meaning in China, Ker said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RICH CHANG
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