This one is well written about Taiwan status.
atimes.com
The real significance of Taiwan's referendum law
By Laurence Eyton
Taiwan's passage of a referendum law last Thursday is a landmark in the island's democratization equal to the 1994 decision to hold direct presidential elections. It also has the power to completely change the Taiwan-China relationship, though whether for better or worse remains to be seen.
However, the significance of the law, as a political and historical event, has been played down in the wake of bizarre behavior by all the major parties involved, both before and after the bill's passage. Those who should be triumphant have been acting like children who got the wrong Christmas present, whereas the parties that spent more than a decade opposing the legislation have been hailing its passage as their greatest victory.
Even the actual passage of the law came as a surprise. True, the day for its consideration had been fixed a fortnight beforehand in the legislature's schedule, but until Thursday evening, many observers, including this one, were still skeptical that the legislation would pass. It failed at the final hurdle the last time it came before the legislature in July, and there was every reason to think that this highly contentious measure might fail again, with the government and opposition possessing different versions of the legislation and little chance of agreement on how to reconcile the two.
So it was that on Friday morning Taiwan woke up with a referendum law, and it still barely knows what to make of it.
The quest for referendum legislation in Taiwan goes back more than a decade. It has long been advocated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and others in the pro-Taiwan independence camp and is stridently opposed by the Kuomintang (KMT), which governed Taiwan from 1945 until 2000. Taiwan's constitution provides for referendums, the problem has always been that there was no law to determine how they should be conducted. Independence supporters were angered that the KMT committed Taiwan to a vision of the island's relationship with China to which, they said, Taiwanese did not subscribe and about which they had never been consulted. It was preposterous, they argued, for a party of exiles from China - which governed not by democratic mandate but by military occupation - to presume to tell the world what Taiwanese, few of whom were allowed into the KMT's colonial-style administration and who were not allowed to elect their representatives, wanted.
The referendum law was seen by native Taiwanese as a tool with which to assert their views against the hegemonic and unrepresentative ideologies of the exiled KMT regime. The KMT had always interpreted this as meaning that the referendum law was required so Taiwanese could vote for formal independence from China, a move it opposed for ideological reasons as well as practical ones - Beijing has long said it would attack Taiwan if the island declared independence.
Even when the pro-independence DPP won the presidency in 2000, its failure to capture a majority of seats in the legislature in an election the following year meant that it had small hope of introducing a referendum bill into the legislature with any chance of success. This standoff was thought to be written in stone for the foreseeable future, especially as, with the democratization of Taiwan's representative institutions, the cry for popular democracy had somewhat subsided.
So what changed? Basically, a massive miscalculation by the KMT about its role as an opposition party - in which it had no previous experience - led to a change in public perception of what referendums were all about.
Partly this was the result of the deadlock between the executive branch and the legislature. The DPP's Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election in 2000 with only 39 percent of the vote because his opponents, Lien Chan of the KMT and James Soong - now chairman of the People First Party (PFP), a KMT splinter group, but who was then, having been expelled from the KMT, running as an independent - split the anti-Chen vote. The DPP, said its opponents, won the election but did not have a mandate to govern.
As a result, the opposition-controlled legislature felt itself justified in rejecting almost any and every policy Chen put forward. These included some measures the opposition were actually opposed to and others they approved of but wanted to pass once they returned to government to reap what kudos were available .
Thus, the stage was set for a political stalemate that voters rapidly got sick of and that the DPP manipulated with great skill. The nation was suffering from gridlock, the DPP said, and it needed a way to break it. This, it suggested, was possible via referendums. If the two branches of government simply couldn't agree, then let the voters decide. Therefore, the DPP introduced a referendum bill into the legislature. The party also made it clear that it would assert executive authority to go ahead with referendums on a number of popular topics at the time of the presidential election whether the bill passed or not.
At first, the KMT and the PFP, known colloquially as the "pan-blue alliance", were as opposed to the measure as they had always been. But their position was gravely weakened both by their behavior in the legislature - which came to be perceived as opposition for the sake of opposition, at the nation's expense - and also by their relationship with China. Both parties, with backgrounds in the staunchly anti-communist KMT of old, had, over the last three years, developed close relations in Beijing and moved party ideology away from the Taiwan-centrism of former KMT president Lee Teng-hui to a staunch "one China" unificationist line reminiscent of the late dictator Chiang Ching-kuo.
The DPP and its supporters, known as the "pan-green" camp, started questioning the pan-blues' intentions. According to the pan-greens, the pan-blues were hardline supporters of unification, but they were opposed to popular democracy. They were close to Beijing and backed a legislative agenda centered on issues more important to China than Taiwan. Did they, the greens asked, intend to "sell out" Taiwan - ie, make a deal with China to exchange Taiwan's sovereignty for a permanent lock-hold on executive power? Was this what lay behind their opposition to the referendum law, that they knew they could not carry out a sweetheart deal with China if they subjected it to the Taiwanese vote?
Enough of this mud stuck, particularly after a calamitous incident where a PFP legislator attended an international conference on SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) as a representative of China to persuade the pan-blues that something dramatic was needed to restore their voter support. What they opted for was to support the referendum law after all.
The pan-blues were not, however, prepared to pass the DPP's bill. Instead, they wrote their own and introduced it into the legislature too. During the summer, inter-party haggling caused the session to run out of time before the bill passed. But this time around - instead of the parties trying to agree on a reconciled version of the two different bills before voting - they simply voted clause by clause. The result was that while a couple of DPP-written clauses made it to the version that finally passed, most of the new act became a pan-blue creation.
That the act passed at all should be considered a massive victory for the pan-greens. It was, after all, a prominent element on their wish list, and which at the turn of the year was thought impossible to accomplish. But the DPP has always been able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and instead of making election capital out of forcing the pan-blues to reverse themselves on such a key issue, the party only complained about the shortcomings of the new law because major elements of the DPP's bill were omitted.
Unlike the DPP's initial proposal, in the new act the executive has no right to initiate a referendum, only the legislature and a popular initiative can do so, and only the legislature can call a referendum on a constitutional matter. These changes deeply offended the DPP since some of their pet projects, such as the adoption of a new constitution by referendum in 2006, have effectively been axed unless the pan-greens can capture the legislature in elections set for December 2004. The government is also angry that the last word on whether a referendum is to be allowed according to the law is left with a committee, seats on which will be awarded according to legislative strength. The committee is thus, for the time being at least, also in the hands of the pan-blues.
The DPP has decried the new law as a "birdcage", in which popular democracy is imprisoned, and the day after its passage, the party contemplated attempting the complicated constitutional process of vetoing the law, despite having fought for it for more than a decade.
Cooler heads have now prevailed, notably that of President Chen who said on Saturday that any referendum law was better than no law at all. But then Chen said he intended to invoke one of the few DPP-drafted clauses intact in the new law, the so-called "defensive referendum" clause.
The "defensive referendum" is a presidential prerogative to call a referendum on sovereignty issues if Taiwan is in immanent danger from China. During debate on the bill, immanent danger was construed as a Chinese attack either about to begin or having already begun - in which case, commentators pointed out, Taiwanese would be more interested in finding their local air-raid shelter than voting in a referendum. But Chen appears - so far, apart from promising the vote, there has been little further detail about the question - to be claiming that China's missile build-up across the Taiwan Strait constitutes a permanent "immanent danger" and that he can call a "defensive referendum" at any time.
Chen's promise is almost certainly connected with widespread disappointment in the DPP camp over the referendum legislation and shows the necessity for Chen to appear to be setting an agenda that the pan-blues have hijacked.
The plan, however, seems pure folly.
Taiwanese might have wanted a referendum law, but they do not want a referendum on national sovereignty issues if it is going to anger China and destabilize cross-Strait relations. Taiwanese overwhelmingly want to keep the status quo. Though they have no intention of reunifying with China at this time, nor do they want to risk serious conflict. They know that should China attack unprovoked, they can rely on US help, but this is not guaranteed if it is Taiwan that is seen as the "troublemaker". And it is hard to see Chen's promise - if it is to be considered worth justifying invoking the "defense" clause - as being anything other than extraordinarily provocative.
Sources in the DPP said Monday that the question in Chen's mooted referendum might be along the lines of "Is Taiwan a part of China/the PRC?" or "Do you support 'one country, two systems' as a basis for negotiation with China?" Of course, they said, there would be no question about independence as such. Whilst these topics might demonstrate some hard truths to China about Taiwanese attitudes - "no" is the predictably overwhelming response on both questions - it is hard not to see them as mischievous.
At the time of writing neither Chinese nor US reactions to Chen's statement had been forthcoming. It was, however, reported Monday that a top-level defense delegation is to go to the US in mid-December to take part in a computer simulated war game based on repelling a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Over the past two weeks, China's anti-Taiwan rhetoric has been getting more and more bellicose. Beijing has always publicly claimed that referendum legislation was a way station on the road to Taiwan's independence. Over the last two weeks, it has repeatedly said that Taiwan's independence was something it would pay any price to stop, and on Friday, the day after the legislation was passed, China reacted by calling the action a "grave concern", diplomatic-speak for a casus belli. In this light, President Chen's remarks seem like pouring gasoline on an already raging fire.
And yet, if handled properly, the very existence of the referendum law that Beijing hates so much might be conducive to an improvement in relations.
China has always believed that unification could be achieved as a deal between political cabals on either side of the Taiwan Strait and that popular democracy had no part to play - a view strengthened by China's successful recovery of Hong Kong and Macau by striking deals with those territories' colonial masters without any reference to the wishes of their subjects.
But with the referendum law in place and the precedent to be set for exercises of popular democracy some time next year - along with the president's plan, the KMT also wants referendums next March on a number of topics, such as the national debt ceiling and increasing health insurance premiums - it is absurd to imagine that peaceful unification can be brought about by anything other than the Taiwanese voting for it. Therefore, China has to realize that it must win over the Taiwanese, and threats, saber-rattling and the massive missile build-up across the Strait are unlikely to do this. China has to learn to use the carrot and not the stick which has, after all, failed for half a century.
This is possibly the reason for Beijing's anger. Perhaps its policy makers are subtle enough to understand that the referendum law is not about independence - it is almost inconceivable that Taiwanese would vote for de jure independence - but nevertheless has just made reunification far, far harder, by forcing China onto the unfamiliar ground of winning hearts and minds, rather than brute coercion. That it is Beijing's reunificationist allies who are responsible for putting the policy in place that has so altered the nature of the "Taiwan problem", is, as far as Taiwan is concerned, all to the good, though little appreciated at present. And so the final irony of the referendum legislation, so castigated by Beijing as Taiwan independence-driven, is that once Beijing sees it now has to try a different approach - and admittedly this might take three or four years - the cold war in the Taiwan Strait might actually start to thaw. |
