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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.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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