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Cross-Strait
wrangling over referendum
By Laurence Eyton
The possibility of a referendum in Taiwan on the question of making its de
facto independence from China de jure has long been one of the most
inflammatory issues both in Taiwan's domestic politics and in
Washington-Taipei-Beijing Taiwan Strait policy circles. China has threatened
military action if Taiwan declares independence while the governing Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) has, in days gone by, toyed with the idea of a
referendum-backed declaration of independence as a way of asserting the rights
of the Taiwanese to self-determination under the UN Charter and breaking out of
the China-imposed diplomatic isolation long suffered by what China still
regards as a renegade province.
On attaining government for the first time in 2000 however, the DPP in the form
of the incoming President Chen Shui-bian, a virulent supporter on independence
in his days as a legislator in the early 1990s, not only dropped any proposal
to have a referendum on the independence issue but actually promised not to
hold one, unless China acted with untoward aggression toward Taiwan.
For Chen this promise was prudent: His presidential election victory in March
of that year seriously worried Washington, with its ambiguous commitment to
Taiwan's defense. Truth to tell, the US would have preferred power to stay in
the hands of the Kuomintang, the party that held power for the previous 50
years and which at least paid lip service to the idea of eventual
reunification. Chen, therefore, certainly needed to impress his US protectors
that he was no hot head who was going to start a war in the Taiwan Strait.
But the promise, it should also be said, cost Chen nothing, because no motion
to declare independence could, given the circumstances that prevailed both then
and now, win the support of a majority of Taiwanese. Nobody in Taiwan is going
to vote for what effectively means a war with China.
This doesn't mean that the referendum idea has gone away. In August last year
Chen caused a furor when he remarked that China and Taiwan were separate
countries on each side of the Taiwan Strait and that Taiwan needed to pass
legislation legitimizing the petitioning and holding of referendums to decide
the unification/independence issue.
Behind this announcement were a number of unfriendly gestures on China’s part
and Chen's evident frustration with the fact that no matter how much goodwill
the Taiwan side showed, China was utterly intransigent over its insistence that
Taiwan adopt the "One China principle" - ie admit that Taiwan is a part of
China - before any formal talks between the two sides could be restarted. Since
Taiwan wants to talk about what the relationship between the two sides should
be, while Beijing has a range of choice that only Henry Ford might appreciate,
it is little wonder that there has been no headway on the issue for the past
three years.
Chen was much maligned both in Taiwan and abroad for raising the referendum
idea, though few of his critics took the time to understand what he was really
advocating. Chen's position was not that Taiwan should have a referendum on
independence - that this was a sure-fire loser hadn't changed. What Chen was
suggesting was that any change in Taiwan's status should have to be ratified by
a referendum. This might have been an intimation of political mortality, for
the lackluster performance of the DPP in the two years since they came to power
dimmed their chances for re-election. On the other hand the KMT, now led by the
man who performed so abysmally in the election in which Chen came to power, had
swung from paying only lip service to its old reunificationist ideals to
adopting a hard-line reunificationist stance that would have delighted Chiang
Kai-shek himself. What Chen was setting in motion a year ago was an insurance
policy, according to which if the newly gung-ho reunificationist KMT came to
power again, their hands would be tied if they tried to force a deal with China
on sovereignty onto the Taiwanese without seeking any kind of democratic
endorsement.
Events in the year since Chen's remarks have shown the wisdom of such a
strategy. The DPP's election chances look doomed. The KMT, however, has done a
deal on a joint election ticket with the even more reunificationist People
First Party (PFP), itself a KMT splinter group, forming what is usually known
as the Pan-blue alliance, which many people in Taiwan think virtually
guarantees it victory.
Supporters of Taiwan independence are now faced with a number of worries:
during their unexpected period in the political wilderness the Pan-blues have
developed uncommonly good relations with Beijing, developing a rather sinister
unity of purpose. What Beijing seeks is, these days, commensurate with Pan-blue
policy. Certainly the Pan blues in the legislature, the only political forum
where they still wield power, have an agenda that accords very closely with
Beijing's goals, in particular the opening of direct transportation links
across the Taiwan Strait and the lifting of any hindrances in cross-strait
investment.
Some observers in the pro-independence camp even accuse the Pan-blues of having
done a deal with Beijing to accept the "One country, two systems" Hong
Kong-like deal that Beijing has long offered as the only acceptable future for
Taiwan. The elements of the deal are that China recovers sovereignty over
Taiwan in return for which it, of course, drops its threats and aggressive
stance and, more importantly, backs constitutional changes that would
eviscerate Taiwan's democracy and make the Pan-blues the permanent government
in Taiwan.
Would the Taiwanese stand for this? The conspiracy theorists think it is a key
point of the Pan-blues' strategy that they have no intention of asking them.
The Pan-blues can win the election on their carefully honed image of superior
economic competence, then claim that this victory provides a mandate to do
whatever they deem to be in Taiwan's best interests without further
consultation of, or endorsement by the voters. For evidence, the conspiracy
theorists point to the Pan-blues' opposition to any sort of referendum law.
Remember, they say, that Beijing has always sought reunification as a
party-to-party agreement. What, they ask, do the Pan-blues have against letting
the people decide major controversial issues themselves, unless they are trying
to foist upon the notoriously passive Taiwanese something they would never
endorse at the ballot box?
This kind of suspicion, warranted or not, is pushing the independence camp to
look again at Chen's insurance policy. Ironically, given that even talk about a
referendum was taboo for decades in Taiwan, the constitution explicitly says
that people have the right to be consulted in such a way. The sticking point
has not been the lack of a constitutional sanction but that an organizational
law needs to be passed by the legislature to set out just how referendums are
to be carried out. Without this law the constitutional right cannot be
asserted. And the KMT-dominated legislature has always refused to entertain
such a law. In fact, as recently as June 6 yet another DPP attempt to push a
referendum law through the legislature foiled by the Pan-blues.
It is one of the more bizarre side effects of the SARS epidemic that it just
might bring about the referendum law that has been so contentious for so long.
When, at the height of the epidemic, Taiwan's bid for observer status in the
World Health Organization (WHO) was nixed by China, Chen vowed a referendum on
the issue. This might seem odd since a Taiwanese referendum, whatever its
result has no binding effect on the deliberation of the WHO in any way. So it
amounts to a referendum over a government ambition, or piece of wishful
thinking.
Taiwan's government, however, sees the issue in a different light. The WHO, as
a victim of the international "One China" orthodoxy, maintains the fiction that
Taiwan is part of China and that Taiwan's health needs are in some way tended
to by the Taipei regime's sworn enemy. Beijing's permission was even sought
before the WHO sent experts to the island to advise on SARS containment and
prevention. Chen wants to send a clear and unequivocal signal to the WHO that
Taiwanese want to enter the organization and want to do so under their own
auspices, not as some entity of China.
The government has now proposed new referendum legislation in which the
Pan-blues' sensitivities are supposedly catered to, in that the draft
legislation specifically states that the procedures it sets up cannot be used
for matters involving sovereignty issues. It is also seeking a referendum on
the construction of a fourth nuclear power plant, another hugely contentious
domestic issue, and on a plan to cut the number of seats in the legislature.
Until last week the Pan-blue reaction to the proposal was predictably negative.
On June 23, James Soong, chairman of the PFP, for example, called the idea of a
referendum on WHO entry "nonsensical". But on June 29 the Pan-blues reversed
themselves entirely, advocating speedy passage of a referendum law and the
holding of a vote on construction of the nuclear power plant in August.
Almost certainly one element in Pan-blue thinking is that it has sustained a
minor public relations disaster by letting a PFP lawmaker attend a conference
on June 24 and 25 in Kuala Lumpur on SARS as a member of China’s, rather than
Taiwan's, delegation. It might well have been prompted also by a remarkable
intervention in Taiwan's affairs by the United States.
On Saturday, June 21, Taiwan newspapers reported that the de facto US
ambassador to Taiwan, Douglas Paal, had told Chen the previous day that
Washington was opposed to Taiwan holding a referendum about anything at all.
China had, it was reported, made it clear to the US that it saw any referendum
on whatever topic, no matter how limited and domestic the issue might be, as
the thin end of an undesirable wedge. To establish a precedent for a referendum
on anything made the likelihood of a referendum on independence more likely and
therefore any vote of this nature on any issue was to be avoided. In fact,
China would see any referendum as crossing the red line, which would prompt it
to take action in some unspecified way against Taiwan. Since Washington had no
intention of fighting a war in the Taiwan Strait over the issue of the fourth
nuclear power plant, it was basically ordering Taiwan to drop the referendum
idea. A statement on the US position was to be issued the following Monday,
June 23.
This provoked was an immediate outcry in Taiwan which ranged from the
predictable - "What right did the US have to interfere in Taiwan's internal
affairs?" - to the shocked - "Why should the world's greatest proselytizer of
democracy oppose popular democracy in Taiwan at the behest of the dictators in
Beijing?" - to the instructive - "But it's not about sovereignty!"
Some of the more perceptive commentators pointed out that China was either
demonstrating ignorance of Taiwan affairs or being disingenuous; after all,
even if the referendum did cover issues of sovereignty it is not a vote on
independence that Beijing fears but a vote on reunification. It is not that the
referendum is the thin end of a wedge that will eventually see a vote on de
jure independence, but rather that it would set a precedent for seeking the
people's endorsement of a policy which would be demanded but could not be
allowed to be repeated were reunification to become a serious proposal.
But whether Paal ever made the remarks attributed to him is open to some
speculation. The American Institute In Taiwan (AIT), the de facto embassy, has
refused to either confirm or deny it. Presidential Office officials on the
other hand insist that he did, but nobody will go on the record to say so.
Monday's announcement came and went without any AIT statement. As the week went
on, Taiwan's representative to the US reported that the State Department had
told him that the US had no policy regarding referendums except that it was
against one on the question of independence. Enquiries by pro-Taiwan members of
the US Congress netted similar results.
The US's stroking of Taiwan to calm it down has detracted from the interesting
question of whether Paal said what he was reported to have said and if so, did
he do so at the behest of the State Department or was he, flying solo, doing a
little policy making of his own? Paal is widely believed to have pro-China
sympathies and his appointment to the AIT job was, according to Washington
sources, largely because the George Bushes, senior and junior, thought they
owed Paal an ambassadorship, but because of the murky financing of his Asia
Pacific Policy Center, realized that he was unlikely to win Senate
confirmation. As a result, the sources claim, he was given the one diplomatic
post which did not require such confirmation, the AIT job, notwithstanding his
somewhat anti-Taiwan views. If Paal was flying solo he deserves the shooting
down he got. If on the other hand he was acting at the State Department's
behest he has been hung out to dry. If he never said what he was reported to
have said, AIT could have denied it outright.
If Paal did intervene, it might have actually been counter-productive since the
furor that it engendered, by turning the referendum issue into a basic question
of Taiwan patriotism and a refusal to be kicked around by superpowers may also
have been influential in persuading the Pan-blues to sign up for the referendum
law at the end of last week.
Given the Pan-blues' traditional opposition to referendum legislation, their
Damascene conversion at the end of last week has to count as one of the most
baffling incidents in Taiwan politics for years. How serious it is, of course,
it is still too early to tell. Some in the DPP think that it is part of a
pre-election strategy to have a referendum in which the DPP position loses so
that the government can then be accused of being financially profligate and the
idea of referendums can itself be discredited. But that can be done without
passing legislation. After all, the very topics that the DPP seeks referendums
on - a nuclear power plant that is half built and it would be folly not to
finish, wishful thinking as regards the WHO, and a purely administrative matter
of legislative seats that nobody among the general public gives a damn about -
hardly set the advocate of popular democracy's blood racing. And some
commentators are even asking whether the government has the right to decide
what a referendum should be on or whether in fact it should be the result of a
popular initiative - a signature drive or the like.
And finally it is worth pointing out that China's fears are exactly right and
as such are a mirror image of the DPP's hopes. Once a referendum about anything
but matters of sovereignty has been held, it will be only natural to call for
one if questions involving sovereignty ever arise. The putative referendum
organization law doesn't allow for this now. But the law can easily be amended.
So what we are seeing in fact is the DPP and Chen trying to get their insurance
policy by stealth. China sees this clearly and doesn't like it. What is utterly
perplexing is why, at least for the moment, the Pan-blues seem to be going
along with it.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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