Starting October 25, 2008, Professor Ting-Kuei Tsay (蔡丁貴教授) of National Taiwan University has been on hunger strike in front of the Legislative Yuan of ROC Regime in Taiwan. He wants to see the Ref...
Starting October 25, 2008, Professor Ting-Kuei Tsay (蔡丁貴教授) of National Taiwan University has been on hunger strike in front of the Legislative Yuan of ROC Regime in Taiwan. He wants to see the Referendum Law of ROC Regime amended soon so that "direct" civil rights can be exercised by the people of Taiwan.
The current Referendum Law, which was enacted by the legislature in 2003, stipulates that the number of signatures required for a referendum to be considered is 0.5 percent of the electorate participating in the latest presidential election — or approximately 16 million individuals — with an additional 5 percent of the population needed for a referendum to be held.
Describing the law as a "bird cage" law (鳥籠公民投票法) with "excessively high thresholds" for putting a referendum proposal on the ballot and passing it, the former DPP administration had proposed cutting the threshold to 0.003 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.
Also, Article 35 of the Referendum Law (公民投票法) stipulates that the 21 members of the Executive Yuans Referendum Review Committee should be chosen on the basis of the proportion of legislative seats held by each political party.
The Council of Grand Justices handed down the ruling on July 11, 2008, which came more than four years after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers first filed a request to seek constitutional interpretation of the law on January 5, 2004, the first day when the law took effect.
The Council of Grand Justices said in the ruling that Article 35 of the law was unconstitutional because it infringed upon the power of the executive branch and violated the principle of the separation of power.
On October 30, 2008, Professor Stone Lin (林建隆教授) of SooChow University came to the hunger-strike sit-in and voiced his opinions on Professor Tsay's appealing for amendments to the Referendum Law.
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