Taiwan's China Post, on democracy advocates who insist that a referendum be held on any peace treaty the KMT signs with China which might endanger Taiwanese sovereignty.
In other words, the Taiwanese had better just STFU. The constitution ALLOWS the president to surrender the country to China. Conveniently for him (and the Butchers of Beijing), it DOESN'T ALLOW the unwashed plebs to object via referendum.
(And if they DO, they'll be locked up, or worse. All in full accordance with the "law" — the law which in theory, is there to PROTECT their rights.)
Interestingly enough, a man the Post reveres was also in favor of direct democracy. That man would be Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the Republic of China. Here's Sun, in his own words:
suffrage, initiative, referendum and recall."
In reply, someone at the Post might say, "Ah, but Sun wasn't in favor of NATIONAL referendums." Which is true. Here's Sun again:
of election, delegate the three other rights to their representatives in the
People's Congress."
Hard to see however, how anyone could argue that initiatives and referendums at the LOCAL LEVEL are somehow good and virtuous, while at the same time referendums at the NATIONAL LEVEL (by some miracle of transubstantiation) become unholy, demagogic obscenities.
“Hard to see however, how anyone could argue that initiatives and referendums at the LOCAL LEVEL are somehow good and virtuous, while at the same time referendums at the NATIONAL LEVEL (by some miracle of transubstantiation) become unholy, demagogic obscenities.”
The answer is: “Weimar.”, if you want to believe German conservatives …
Oh … Here in Germany, the state peopless can exercise genuine legislative power at the state level, which makes trying to find a difference to the national level even more absurd.
However, on the municipal level, they can only exercise executive power, because the communes’ powers are purely administrative (they have no legislative powers).
Do the provinces in the ROC possess genuine statehood? And do they possess legislative powers?
You see, it IS possible to find differences …
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Re. your 6:27 comment:
Sure, I take your point. Of course, I will admit that direct democracy CAN be abused to curtail the rights of the individual or violate constitutional power arrangements (as was the case in Weimar).
In Taiwan’s case, that fear is overblown. In the last four years there have been a grand total of 3 referendums (1 local, 2 national). The local referendum was about classroom sizes. The first national referendum was about national defense policy; the second dealt with foreign policy (Should Taiwan be a member of the United Nations?).
None of these infringed upon individual rights. Now, someone might argue that the foreign policy referendums infringed upon the executive, but they really were intended to demonstrate political support for current policies. (For example, when Taiwan goes to the U.N. to ask for membership, it would have been a powerful argument to say, “Oh, and in a recent referendum, 75% of Taiwanese supported joining your organization!”)
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Re. your 11:45 comment:
On paper, the ROC has plenty of provinces. In reality though, almost all of those belong to the PRC, leaving the ROC with only Taiwan province and a couple of very small islands which belong to Fujian province.
Because the ROC was essentially one country composed of one large province, the provincial government was phased out in the late ’90s. In practice, it’s now a unitary, not a federal state like Germany.
(Although there ARE local and county legislative governments — I’m not sure exactly what their powers are, however.)