Amendment Of Referendum Act Urged Via A Relay of Hunger Strikes By People Rule Foundation

人民作主基金會發動16天接力禁食,促修公投法。(攝影/林宜瑩)

Taiwan Church News
3401 Edition
1 – 7 May, 2017
Topical News

Amendment Of Referendum Act Urged Via A Relay of Hunger Strikes By People Rule Foundation

Reported by Lin Yi-yin

Urging Tsai Ing-wen administration and the congress to amend the Referendum Act before May 20, a relay of hunger strike by the People Rule Foundation(PRF) was held in front of Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) headquarter from April 26 to May 20. “We need a Referendum Act, being capable to represent the will of the people, in order to develop our consensus through democratic process and solve various domestic problems and challenges abroad”, according to PRF.

In the press conference on April 26, Ms Chen Li-quei, chairwoman of PRF, read a statement not only describing the incessant criticisms of the undemocratic Referendum Act as a “Bird Cage Referendum Act” since its legislature from 2003, but also bombarding DPP’s doing nothing to complete the amendment after taking a landslide victory in 2016.

As a matter of fact, some technical amendments of Referendum Act, like the age of voter lowered from 20-year-old to 18-year-old; lowering threshold of signature for a proposal from 0.5% to 0.01% ; lowering threshold of upholding a proposal from 5% to 1.5%; approving votes should be higher than opposition votes and above one quarter of total votes and etc, had been done in the first reading of DPP’s draft proposal in last December. PRF has no problem with DPP on these technical amendments, yet their only concern now is that DPP has to complete the amendment and materialize her campaign promise as soon as possible, especially before the first anniversary of President Tsai Ing-wen on May 20.

Translated by Peter Wolfe

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