Taipei, Nov. 3 (CNA) President Chen Shui-bian said Saturday that holding a referendum simultaneously with a major election is right and proper and a "bird cage referendum" is meaningless.
A referendum on retrieving the Kuomintang's (KMT's) "ill-gotten" assets will definitely be held alongside the legislative elections next January, and a U.N.-bid referendum will be held simultaneously with the presidential election slated for March 22, 2008, Chen said at the International Conference on the Comparative Studies of Referendum held in Taipei.
Offering his observations to hundreds of conference participants, Chen said "there's no red line drawn in democracy, and any democracy with limitations and conditional requirements is not a true democracy."
Chen made clear that a referendum should be held alongside a major election because "it's a democratic norm" and it's only right and proper.
"It's a problem which is not a problem at all, " he said.
A "bird cage referendum" equals no referendum, he said, adding that referendums are expected to complement legislative politics. "It's unfortunate that the opposition party, which controls a majority in the legislature, has failed to uphold the people's right of participating in a referendum," he added.
"The current Referendum Law is anti-democratic and anti-human rights and needs to be amended in the future," Chen said.
As of Friday, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had collected close to 2.69 million signatures for its U.N.-bid referendum petition, Chen announced in his opening remarks.
Chen said he's confident that the DPP's U.N.-bid referendum will be passed eventually but added that other issues, such as the establishment of nuclear plants, might not garner too much public interest, which is why the law should be amended.