TAIWAN UN REFERENDUMS CHUGGING ALONG

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TAIPEI 002116 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 6/15/2032 TAGS: PGOV TW SUBJECT: TAIWAN UN REFERENDUMS CHUGGING ALONG REF: A. TAIPEI 02040 ¶B. TAIPEI 02112 Classified By: AIT Acting Director Robert S. Wang, Reason 1.4 (b/d) ¶1. (C) Summary: The ruling DPP and the opposition KMT cleared their referendums on UN participation through the Referendum Review Committee this summer and are now well into a signature collection drive to put their proposals to a public vote. Both parties have a six month period to collect at least 830,000 signatures, or 5 percent of the total eligible voting population. The referendums will likely be held in conjunction with the March 2008 presidential election. The bar for passage, however, remains high and most AIT contacts expect that with dueling referendums on the ballot neither is likely to pass. This has prompted calls from some political leaders to field a joint referendum (Ref A). Technical and legal factors will likely preclude a merging of the current proposals, but there is an outside chance that the legislature could field its own last-minute compromise initiative that would not require a signature campaign. End Summary. Referendum Signature Drives Off and Running -------------- ¶2. (C) The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) cleared their referendums on UN participation through the Referendum Review Committee earlier this summer. Both parties are now well into a signature collection drive to put their respective proposals to a public vote. They have a six month period to collect at least 830,000 signatures, or 5 percent of the total eligible voting population. The signature lists will be submitted to the Central Election Commission (CEC),which will delegate the task of signature verification to local household registry bureaus that have up to 45 days to complete their work. Only if a referendum passes these technical requirements is it formally approved as an official referendum. The CEC then has six months to put the measure to a public vote. The date of the vote must be announced at least 28 days before ballots are to be cast. ¶3. (C) The DPP Standing Committee in July set a goal of collecting 1.2 million signatures, assigning signature quotas to party leaders, such as presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (Chang-ting) (20,000),Chairman Yu Shyi-kun (10,000),and DPP legislators (each 5,000). Hsieh Campaign Executive Director 
Lee Ying-yuan proudly told AIT on September 12 that the Hsieh campaign has collected the most signatures so far--30,000--in support of the drive. The DPP is confident it will reach its collection target in the next couple of months. Lee told AIT he expects the DPP September 15 UN rally in Kaohsiung to give the signature drive a boost. As of September 12, he said, the DPP had collected 480,000 signatures, or 45 per cent of its total goal and well ahead of schedule. ¶4. (C) The KMT launched its own signature collection drive early this month and is mobilizing its extensive grassroots organizations to garner the required signatures. KMT Organization Department Director Liao Feng-te told AIT that he does not expect any difficulties in reaching the 830,000 threshold. Liao suggested the KMT could even reach its target in half the time it takes the DPP. Liao explained that the KMT enjoys a more robust and extensive organizational structure throughout Taiwan than the DPP. Much of the KMT base, moreover, is concentrated in high population centers rather than spread out over rural areas, which greatly facilitates signature collection. KMT Legislator Sun Ta-chien, however, told AIT separately that his party would soon run into problems collecting signatures. Legislators at the local level responsible for meeting quotas, he explained, see the referendum issue as a "waste of time" and grassroots supporters are not enthused about the referendum issue. Sun alleged the DPP is also encountering voter apathy in its ranks, but could not provide specifics. Timing and Voting Procedures -------------- TAIPEI 00002116 002 OF 003 ¶5. (C) Several days ago, President Chen publicly announced that the UN referendum will be held in conjunction with the March 2008 presidential election. This raised immediate opposition charges that the Central Election Commission (CEC) was controlled by the DPP. CEC Director Yu Ming-hsien recently told AIT that the CEC board of commissioners decides the date of any referendum. As political appointees, he acknowledged, the commissioners are likely to give the administration's preferences considerable weight. Yu predicted that most likely the referendums will be held in conjunction with the presidential election in order to boost voter turnout and maximize chances of passage. ¶6. (C) Yu explained that on election day the presidential ballot and any approved referendums will, following past procedures, be printed on separate sheets of paper. Voters entering polling stations will have to indicate the ballots they want to pick up. Yu said that picking up a referendum ballot, whether or not it is cast or later invalidated, counts toward meeting the high participation threshold required for a valid referendum. High Threshold for Passage... -------------- ¶7. (C) Taiwan's referendum law, a product of extensive compromise between the DPP and KMT in 2005, has one of the world's highest bars for passage of a referendum. Half of all of Taiwan's eligible voters must cast ballots for a referendum to be considered valid. In turn, over half of those votes cast must support the referendum for it to pass. The failure of Taiwan's first--and to date only--referendum in March 2004 to pass demonstrates the effect of the high threshold for validity and passage. Because of the pan-Blue boycotted the March 2004 defensive referendum, the participation rate was 45 percent, making the referendum invalid, so it did not pass despite the fact that "yes" ballots exceeded 90 percent. ...Means Low Chances of Passage -------------- ¶8. (C) Yu told AIT that holding two referendums on the UN issue simultaneously would effectively raise the bar even higher, since voters will tend to vote only for the referendum supported by their camp, lowering the chances that either referendum will pass. If either party strongly urges its supporters to boycott the other party's referendum, the referendum's chance of meeting the required threshold would be quite low. Voter turnout, moreover, has a direct effect on a referendum's chances of passage. In the 2008 presidential election, voter turnout will probably be in the neighborhood of 70-80 percent. If turnout is 80 percent, as it was in 2004, about 63 percent of participating voters would need to cast referendum ballots. Lower turn-out effectively raises the bar for referendum validity and passage. If turnout is 70 percent, about 72 percent of participating voters would need to cast referendum ballots (whether yes or no) to make the referendum valid. Is A Joint UN Referendum in the Cards? -------------- ¶9. (C) The likelihood that both UN referendums could fail has prompted recent calls from some political leaders to merge the two initiatives (Ref A) . The CEC's Yu suggested that technical and regulatory hurdles would make it very difficult for the CEC to approve such a proposal. The CEC does not have the legal authority to merge referendum proposals, he explained, even if both political parties are willing to change their own referendums. Once both referendums clear the Review Commission stage, furthermore, the signature approved wording cannot be altered without withdrawing the referendum and starting from scratch. Moreover, signatures in support of one referendum as worded could not be counted toward a new, joint referendum. The only way to merge the two referendums, Yu explained, would be for the two sides to start a completely new proposal from the beginning. Tamkang University political scientists Shih Cheng-feng, however, offered another possibility. He told TAIPEI 00002116 003 OF 003 AIT on September 11 that if the two parties form a consensus on fielding a joint referendum, they could push the initiative through the Legislative Yuan (LY). An LY-approved referendum can be listed directly on the ballot without going through the Review Committee for approval or a signature campaign. ¶10. (C) Chances of reaching any agreement for the moment appear low. Hsieh campaign manager Lee Ying-yuan clarified to AIT that Frank Hsieh's proposal was less about merging the referendums than it was about urging the KMT to change the wording of its referendum to support UN membership for "Taiwan." KMT Vice Chairman John Kuan (Kuan Chung) argued that it would be technically "impossible" to merge the two initiatives. The KMT, he said, views Hsieh's proposal as "duplicitous" since the purpose of the DPP referendum in the first place is to intensify ethnic confrontation in the run up to the election. Global Views Monthly Polling Director Tai Li-an told AIT on September 13 that any compromise now would be an issue of "face," as neither side could afford to look like it was the one backing down first. Comment -------------- ¶11. (C) The DPP and KMT are well on their way to collecting enough signatures to put the UN referendums to the voters in the March 2008 presidential election. Though the threshold for passage for any referendum is high under normal circumstances, and perhaps only made more difficult with competing proposals, there are no signs that the parties are looking to apply the brakes any time soon (Ref B). Given past tendencies for both parties to reach last minute agreements, especially on issues that may have strong public approval, it remains to be seen whether partisan bickering stands a chance of giving way to a joint referendum with significantly enhanced chances of passing. WANG