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Tight presidential election pushes reform
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Tight presidential election pushes reform
<B>TAIWAN?S</B> contenders for the presidential election ? locked neck-and-neck in the race for the March 20 vote ? yesterday backed a move by parliament to halve the number of seats in the often raucous assembly.
The reform, aimed at making the legislature more efficient, made unexpected headway in a parliamentary committee late on Wednesday just days before an election that could be decided by a few hundred thousand votes out of an electorate of 16 million.
Little differentiates incumbent President Chen Shui-bian and his Nationalist opponent, Lien Chan, except for their policy on China, with Chen espousing an aggressive claim that Taiwan is independent and Lien favouring a more conciliatory approach to Taiwan?s giant foe.
Campaigning in Chen?s heartland of support in the south, Lien said he welcomed the move to cut the number of seats in parliament, where rivals regularly throw punches at each other, to 113 from 225.
?I am very happy to see this accomplished,? he said.
But lawmakers may not have enough time to ratify the reform before the election in nine days, he said.
Chen?s Democratic Progressive Party wants to pass the motion before March 20, but Lien?s Nationalist Party and his ally, the People First Party, hold a slim majority in parliament.
Chen and Lien have said they supported the reform in principle, but differ sharply on how to implement it.
Hoping to build up pressure, several hundred straw-hatted activists staged a sit-in outside parliament to demand the reform be passed as quickly as possible.
Leading them was Lin Yi-hsiung, a widely respected former dissident and veteran democracy activist who last week joined dozens of suppporters in a 10-day fast outside parliament.
?Politicians should be held accountable for what they say. They can?t keep making empty promises and take no action,? Lin told Reuters in a recent interview.
Much stake </B>
Critics say parliament a source of chaos and blamed it for inefficiency as lawmakers focus on grabbing the media spotlight rather than on passing laws.
Chen, who swept to power in a 2000 election that ended five decades of Nationalist rule in Taiwan, blamed Lien on Wednesday for blocking reform and urged voters to hand him a second term.
?Since the reform is a popular move among voters, neither side can afford to be labelled as anti-reform,? said Philip Yang, a political scientist at the National Taiwan University. ?Too much is at stake,? Yang said.
Chen won the 2000 election ? a three-way race ? with 39 percent of the vote and with a lead of a mere 310,000 votes.
Chen?s campaign is centred on a claim that Taiwan is independent and on a referendum asking whether to boost defences against China ? a suggestion that has infuriated Bejing.
Chen, in an electronic newsletter, pledged to make peace with Beijing but said his island must be treated as an equal in talks.
?I hope to see genuine interaction on the both sides of the Taiwan Strait and lasting security and peace,? Chen wrote.
Beijing, which says Taiwan is a renegade province to be recovered by force if necessary, views Chen?s referendum as a dry run for a vote on independence that it says could lead to war.
Alice Hung
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