|
Now Is Not the Time for a Referendum on Taiwanese Independence
[The National Interest] Led by Formosa TV (FTV) chairman Kuo Pei-hung’s Formosa Alliance, pro-independence advocates in Taiwan have recently sparked controversy with a call for a referendum on whether the democratic island-nation should declare de jure independence. Deeply unsatisfied with what they regard as President Tsai Ing-wen’s far too cautious, if not "concessionary," approach to China, the Alliance, along with like-minded members within Taiwan’s deep-green camp, is likely to field its own candidate in next January’s general elections and has pressured Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to select someone else for the race.Through their calls for a more muscular response to Chinese encroachment and for a referendum on sovereignty, the Alliance has attracted firm responses from a number of American academics (among them Richard Bush of the Brookings Institution) as well as the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the United States’ de facto embassy in the absence of official diplomatic ties‐and those responses have been highly unfavorable to the referendum cause. In both cases, the principal source of concern is the belief that a unilateral change to the "status quo" in the Taiwan Strait, such as could occur should a referendum be passed, would be both potentially destabilizing and contravene the United States’ longstanding "one China" policy. Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has also indicated it would deal "carefully" with the referendum issue, adding that "as a responsible government, the administration has to take into consideration Taiwan's role in maintaining peace and stability in the region." Revisions to referendum laws enacted by the Tsai administration, which have lowered the thresholds for the initiation and passage of referenda, have strategically left out plebiscites on constitutional change and anything that touches on the Republic of China’s (Taiwan’s official designation) sovereignty. Posted by: Besoeker 2019-02-20 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=534789 |