Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Chongkian/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
THE CENTRAL ELECTION COMMISSION (CEC) has rejected two out of the three referendums advanced by the pan-Blue camp.
The KMT’s proposed referendum on caning for offenses such as sexual assault, large-scale fraud, and child abuse was thrown out. Likewise, so, too, was a referendum question proposed by the TPP that would have allocated fines from traffic violations to local governments for improving traffic safety.
The CEC was more divided on the issue of traffic violations, voting 4-3 against the proposal. By contrast, the CEC voted unanimously against the caning proposal. The justification for preventing the two referendums was that they did not fall under the purview of what referendums should cover.
Human rights groups have largely hailed the rejection of the caning proposal. The proposal would have contravened international human rights conventions that Taiwan has voluntarily ratified and would have likely drawn international exposure in such a way as to make Taiwan a laughingstock. It is largely countries that are former British colonies or which have Sharia law that have caning as a punishment.
To this extent, there was no widespread social demand for caning before the KMT made the proposal. The KMT itself appeared internally divided on the issue, with KMT chair Cheng Li-wun wanting to back down from the issue before apparent resistance from the KMT legislative caucus.
As for traffic violations, one can situate this referendum question in line with continued budgetary contention between local and central governments. The TPP, however, had not previously leaned particularly strongly into the issue of traffic safety, making it very possible that it proposed the question in order to have a political agenda distinctive from that of the KMT when it came to elections.
So, then, the only referendum question approved by the CEC will be on nuclear energy. The referendum question will be to call for the abolition of policies that mandate the establishment of a nuclear-free homeland. In this sense, the KMT would be attempting to leverage on a platform traditionally popular with its base.
And yet one notes that there have been four referendum questions pushed for by the pan-Blue camp on nuclear energy in the last decade. There is little that is distinctive about once again calling for an end to policies for a nuclear-free homeland and, this time around, the KMT did not campaign with the public to hold a referendum but instead pushed through a referendum using its current control of the Legislative Yuan.
Likewise, President Lai Ching-te has already reversed course on the DPP’s historic opposition to nuclear energy to submit plans for the restarts of two reactors. This reversal was in order to placate international concerns about nuclear energy as facilitating Taiwan’s current AI boom, as well as the energy demands that would have to be met in the event of an invasion. But even as the DPP claims that it still has the long-term aim of a nuclear-free homeland, this reversal may ultimately take the winds out of the KMT’s sails.
More generally, the KMT did not actually have to put the issues that it proposed for national referendums to a vote; it could have simply used its current control over the legislature to push them through into law. As such, its referendum aims this time are quite clear in order to influence elections. Yet one notes that the CEC’s rejection of referendum questions shows that Michael You’s CEC can be combative when it comes to throwing out what is allowed to be put to the national referendum, this despite the fact that–as former head of the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation–You appears to have originally been put in his position as an olive branch to the KMT.