The referendums scheduled for August can be regarded as a midterm exam for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, in which its core policies of environmental protection and a nuclear energy phase-out are to be scrutinized.
One of the referendum proposals, concerning the relocation of a liquefied natural gas terminal project by state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan away from an algal reef ecosystem off Taoyuan’s coast, had been widely neglected until environmental advocates expanded their strategic engagement with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
For the advocates, engaging with the KMT might be seen as a necessary evil, after they have experienced the DPP, their preferred party, downplaying the issue. As of Friday, their campaign had garnered more than 528,000 signatures — 10 times more than one month ago. The surge was not just due to KMT supporters jumping on the bandwagon, but also due to people who loathed to see DPP supporters dismiss the advocates as campaigners for the sake of campaigning or naive pawns in the hands of the KMT.
If approved by the Central Election Commission, the referendum would on Aug. 28 be juxtaposed against one on restarting the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮), which might foreshadow more confrontation over the government’s energy policy. This might also be the reason the government reportedly aims to send DPP Legislator Hung Sun-han (洪申翰), DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲), who have backgrounds in social activism, to communicate with the environmental advocates.
However, negotiations between the government and the advocates would be of no avail if the administration cannot admit its mistakes in the decisionmaking process on the proposed gas terminal.
The Referendum Act (公民投票法) stipulates that, once a referendum on a major policy is passed, the president and government agencies should, but do not have to, take the steps necessary to fulfill the proposal, and no policy should be enacted to counter the proposal within two years. Therefore, the effect of a referendum is limited. It does not determine government policy, but rather offers parties an occasion to rally their supporters.
Nonetheless, the result of a referendum reflects public opinion on the ruling party’s performance. If the DPP believes its own words that Taiwan is a “bastion of democracy,” it should foster policy debates, instead of being satisfied with the self-deceptive illusion that it has “done better than the KMT.”
Environmental advocates in 2018 proposed an alternative location for the gas terminal at the Port of Taipei, but the government did not seriously consider the proposal and instead shrugged it off, saying that revising plans would delay the goal to achieve a “nuclear-free homeland” by 2025.
It is problematic that the public is not given options in terms of power-generation policies, or an integrated timetable on the planned commissioning and decommissioning of power-generation facilities. While many of the nation’s new energy policy projects are carried out in a hurry to meet the goal of a nuclear-free homeland, the government fails to inform the public of potential risks, not to mention that the goal’s legal basis in the Electricity Act (電業法) was scrapped in a referendum in 2018.
For many people, the 10 referendums held simultaneously with the 2018 local elections were a nightmare, as there was no thorough public discussion on the issues and many experienced nasty clashes with family members over divergent opinions.
To prevent such turmoil from recurring, the government should appeal to rational debate, rather than instigating hatred for opponents, and lead the nation toward a better democracy, without the counterproductive DPP-KMT antagonism.
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