Government’s ECFA referendum stance misleading: TSU
2010/06/01
Government’s ECFA referendum stance misleading: TSU
Taipei, June 1 (CNA) — The opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said Tuesday that the government’s position that a proposed trade pact with China should not be put to a referendum "is misleading." "The decision of the public should prevail over any resolution reached by the government should they run contrary to each other, " TSU Chairman Huang Kung-huei said at an international press conference, citing an example of a recent referendum in Iceland.
Huang, whose tiny opposition party initiated a referendum proposal on the proposed cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) , was referring to a March 6 referendum in which around 90 percent of Iceland’s voters vetoed a government debt payment plan to Britain and the Netherlands even though the plan had been endorsed by Iceland’s parliament.
The Referendum Screening Committee under the Executive Yuan is to decide Thursday on whether the ECFA referendum proposal is valid.
Officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Mainland Affairs Council insisted at a public hearing on the ECFA referendum last week that the ECFA should not be subject to a referendum.
Accusing "high-ranking government and ruling Kuomintang officials in a meeting Monday of having reached a decision to nip the ECFA referendum in the bud, " Huang urged the referendum committee to exercise its jurisdiction independently, professionally and fairly.
"If the ECFA referendum proposal is rejected, the TSU will call on the public to regard the year-end special municipality elections as a "referendum" and to vote down all KMT candidates, " Huang said.
The elections are widely regarded as a crucial indicator to the 2012 presidential election.
Former Vice President Annette Lu said at the press conference that Taiwan and China — both of which are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) — should seek to sign a free trade agreement according to the spirit of the WTO, and that a cross-strait ECFA will only lead the international community to believe that Taiwan no longer insists that it is an independent and sovereign country.
Lu said China will use the ECFA to forge cross-strait "economic integration" as a prelude to its eventual goal of "political integration." Premier Wu Den-yih said earlier that same day that the government respects the people’s right to referendums, as long as they are held legally and constitutionally.
But the TSU-initiated ECFA referendum is not the case, as the content of the proposed China pact has not been announced. "How can we hold a referendum on a subject with content that has yet to be fixed?" he asked. (By Wen Kui-hsiang, Garfie Li and Bear Lee)
