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BILL SETS HIGH THRESHOLD FOR PEOPLE TO INITIATE REFERENDUM: EX-DPP HEAD

2003-12-06 15:29:01

Ilan, Taiwan, Dec. 6 (CNA) Former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Lin Yi-hsiung on Saturday continued to criticize the referendum bill for setting too high a threshold for the people to initiate a referendum.

Lin made the remarks in Ilan, northeastern Taiwan, where he and Ilan Magistrate Liu Shou-cheng, DPP legislators Chen Chin-teh and Chang Chuan-tien and party officials distributed leaflets to propagate their idea to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant through referendum.

Lin, who has long advocated holding a referendum on the fate of the half-finished nuclear plant in Kungliao, Taipei County, said that according to the referendum bill that cleared the Legislative Yuan Nov. 27, the people will have to collect the signatures of 5 percent, or more than 700,000 if based on the previous presidential election, of the electorates in the latest presidential election, to initiate a referendum.

But he pointed out that compared with a presidential aspirant who only needs the signatures of 200,000 to enter into a presidential race, the referendum bill is "absurd" to place such a high restriction on people's ability to initiation a referendum.

The high threshold has ignored the "people's right to take part in the formulation of public policy," he said.

For this reason, Lin said that he will call on Lien Chan, chairman of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) Dec. 12. The KMT orchestrated the passage of the referendum based largely on its own version. Lin said he hopes Lien will orchestrate a correction of the flaws in the bill.

Under the referendum bill, the people, the Legislative Yuan and the president all have the power to initiate a referendum, although it only empowers the president to initiate a referendum when the nation is under external threat. The external threat is tacitly seen as referring to attacks from mainland China.

(By Lilian Wu)

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