Taiwan Church News
3203 Edition
July 15-21, 2013
Church Ministry News

Reported by Simon Lin
As Ma Ying-jeou government wishes to carry on the construction of the 4th nuclear power plant, his KMT dominated congress aretherefore urged to propose a referendum bill called "Referendum on the 4th nuclear power plant". This prima facie democratic referendum, yet meticulously maneuvered as a tactic to stick on nuclear power, turns Taiwanese people even more furious as current Taiwan referendum is actually disabled by her extra high thresh hold legislated by KMT. Though there were some KMTlawmakers voiced their opposition to this referendum, high ranking profiles of KMT still insisted to put it through.
As this referendum is scheduled to be cast vote in the extra session of legislative meeting before the end July, Southern Office of Taiwan Association for Human Right invited Professor Hsu Wei-chuyn, who is the Chairman of the Taiwan Platform to Protect Democracy, delivering a speech on July 11th to expose the fallacy of this referendum and suggest counter measures.
Professor Hsu pointed out: not only the stipulation that referendum turn out rate should reach Taiwan's half population isextremely ridiculous around the globe, but also the proposition of this referendum is highly tricky using a question with double negative connective: Do you agree the 4th nuclear power plant shall stop construction without operation? In the name of whatsoever, a referendum proposition using negative terms is short of any legitimacy. In addition, when the environmental groups asked the Executive Yuan to abolish this kind of negative referendum, this administration insisted their distorted interpretation of the laws and refused to comply.
All these tactics are all cheating lies to cut off the dialogue between the government and the civil society, persuading thepublic that referendum is the only way to solve the impasse and locking the public opinion into the cage referendum set up by KMT's maneuver. Finally, as the turn out rate would definitely fail to reach half Taiwan's population as it destined to be, KMT government would "legally" get the anticipated conclusion and silenced the anti-nuclear voice once for all.
Professor Hsu remarked that the most urgent work right now is to get back the power of discourse on the 4th nuclear plant,explaining the truth to more people and practicing the "civil disobedience" to manifest the illegitimacy of this cage referendum. Once this referendum proposition is passed by Legislative Yuan, we still have to voice our opposition during the referendum campaign. High thresh hold referendum should not deter our will to turn out and scrape the nuclear power, lest we send a wrong message to Ma Ying-jeou that "Anti-Nuke is not the Majority"!
The worst outcome for this plebiscite referendum could be: no more direct democracy plea for anti-nuclear could be heard within the coming 8 years. Everything has to go back to the congress through party lawmakers!
Translated by Peter Wolfe