Taipei, Nov. 3 (CNA) Is referendum an efficient way of direct democracy? Is it legitimate for political parties to use referendum as a tool of moblizing voters in election? Should referenda set high thresholds? Those questions were up for debate Saturday in an international conference.
Not surprisingly, academia from Taiwan, Japan, Europe and the U.S. came home without definite answers to those questions, which were discussed in the International Conference on Comparative Studies of Referendum.
There has been no conclusions on whether referendum is a good instrument of direct democracy, and setting up high thresholds is not necessarily a bad thing, argued Wu Nai-teh, a research fellow at Academia Sinica.
Referendum is a good way to aggregate public opinions and let people participate in the decision-making process of social and national affairs. The process, not the results, is the key, said Chou Yong-hong, Director of ruling Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP's) Department of Youth Development.
Scholars also paid attention to one of the hottest topics in Taiwan's political scene: the U.N.-bid referendum. Dane Waters, Chairman and Founder of Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, said that "there's no doubt the U.S. government has double standard when it comes to Taiwan" since it has always routinely supported the use of referenda by other countries as a means of showing the sovereignty of the people.
"The U.S. has a very practical reason [for opposing Taiwan's U.N.-bid referendum] for wishing to avoid a showdown with China" as it's so focused on issues in the Middle East, especially Iran, Iraq and Turkey, Waters said.
Boris Voyer, Coordinator of Initiate and Referendum Institute-Asia International Steering Committee, tried to explore a deeper meaning behind the international support for Taiwan's U.N. bid.
Voyer cited a number of survey results and pointed out that, while most people in America, Europe and Japan supported Taiwan's bid and called for their government to help Taiwan in obtaining the U.N. membership, the majority of these people did not know much about Taiwan.
The Americans supported Taiwan's referendum probably because America was born with a tool of referendum in its constitution, he said, adding that Japanese could respond favorably because of its long and close history with Taiwan and the animosity existing between China and Japan.
Simply put, Voyer concluded, Taiwan needs to tell its story to the world and re-brand itself.
More than 10 theses were presented in the conference, which discussed in three sessions of international experience on referendum development and legislation, retrospective and prospects of Taiwan's referendum, and demacracy and referendum.
The one-day conference was hosted by Taiwan Thinktank and sponsored by Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.