My wife is all for it. “Shits gonna hit the fan anyway,” she likes to say, “better sooner than later.”
When you think it through though, it is ultimately conterproductive. Sure its the voice of the people saying “hey, don’t point that gun at me.” Fine and dandy, we all say and want that. But as a slow step towards declaring indendence, which it seems to be, well hell man should Taiwan actually declare that independence, rather than live with the status quo of its defacto independence, it will be percieved as greater threat and have more missles pointed in its direction. No?
You see, moderator? You see what you’ve done? Chou’s off on the wrong track because you took out the questions to be put to referendum. Meddling FOOL!
But hold up – I see that Cranky’s not been logged on in the past 24 hours. So who’s been meddling with his forum?
Chou, Greasy Chen has just announced the questions that will be on the referendum – should Taiwan further beef up its anti-missile defenses and should Taiwan form a new organization to discuss cross-strait peace with Beijing. That’s it, in all its pointless, toothless wonder. He totally pussied out on the Beijing missile question.
I had set up a poll so the people could have their say, but some dictator or other must have felt it was “too sensitive” or something and censored me.
[quote=“sandman”]
Chou, Greasy Chen has just announced the questions that will be on the referendum – should Taiwan further beef up its anti-missile defenses and should Taiwan form a new organization to discuss cross-strait peace with Beijing. That’s it, in all its pointless, toothless wonder. He totally pussied out on the Beijing missile question.
I had set up a poll so the people could have their say, but some dictator or other must have felt it was “too sensitive” or something and censored me.[/quote]
Oh, I knew shouldn’t have strayed from the nonsensical saftey of the fun and games forum. Your raving does make more sense with your explanation. Not about the Ref. law but the questions put up for this first one. Yes quite toothless, “really unecessary questions,” agrees the wife. Face saving BS, 800million down the drain.
Either that or it was watered-down by the oposition mods, it was setting a dangerous precident, This forum will never be allowed to be indepedent from Forumosa, that is a fools’ road of danger that will only cause dispair… blah blah blah…
Actually, after I posted that comment I googled e-referendum and was surprised to find a lot of information about e-referendums all dealing with one country. What country? Who would have their shit together enough to hold an e-referendum?
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Italy! Of all places. Maybe Taiwan will be next.
Interesting list you had there, but I would hardly consider 1830 or 1776 the near past. And the period in question is one of nation-state building where many of the countries we recognize today were just coming to thier own, rather then “breaking away” from someonne else. Many of the others represent the crumbling of colonialism, and in the case off Yugosalvia and the USSR we are talking about nations forced into existance at the end of World War Two. A natural breakaway, or return to some sense of normal idenntity, comes with the end of the cold war. The case of Israel and Palistine is biblical, the word “breakaway” hardly applies. A similar argument can be made for the Kurds and Turks.
I think the “point” of the missile referendum was the “us” and “them” wording, not the missiles. And the real point of that was that it was DaBien’s entire campaign platform. Has anyone heard anything else from him, other than his saying that the DPP camp miscalculated the wealth of his competition. No matter, it was and still is a waste of public funds.
These referendum questions are silly. Referendums should be about whether or not the government should do something - spoecifically pass a lawa bout something - not stuff the y don’t have control over, or ‘do y’reckon’ stuff.
How about:
Do you agree that we should have world peace?
Do you agree that it would be nice if we could have more sunny whether?
As the president of Taiwan, A Bian should highlight to the world that there is someone pointing missiles down on the Island. This would provide a world security blanket saying the people of Taiwan do not want missiles pointed at them. The ball would then be in china’s court and if they are part of the global community they would essentially have to put them away or at least have to explain their actions.
Besides the pan blue majority legislature is such a joke, you need the people’s opinion to be voiced.
Yes Fluffy, I did edit my post. Does that make the poll disappear? Since that seems to be what happened I’ve reinstated the poll.
Tough shit Quirky. Seems the mods didn’t agree with your censorship attempts after all.
Wow, if only we knew this before we could have had blantantly obvious referendums instead of wars all this time. Doh!
This is an election gimmick, plain and simple. Chen’s sat on his hands for over three years trying to not piss anyone off. Now time’s short and he’s decided making some kind of impact, bad or good, is better than making none at all.
A huge earthquake that killed 3,000 and devistated an entire town and buildings in Taizhong.
An opposition that refused to do anything but block passage of anything. Remember the FNPP political firestorm.
An entirely new post-9/11 foreign policy.
Taibei’s hugest flood in a century.
The aftermath of the Asian Economic Crisis and trying to retain TMSC and other firms that lusted after cheap Chinese labor.
An entirely new post-Jiang Chinese leadership.
SARS[/quote]
The 9/21 earthquake occurred in 1999, well before the election. Reconstruction, yeah, but he didn’t have to deal with the earthquake. Every president has opposition. It’s part of the job. Same for changing foreign policy, and Taiwan’s foreign policy didn’t change that much after 9/11. The flood was a mess, but Mayor Ma was more responsible for that mess than Chen. China’s leadership changes haven’t changed China’s stance towards Taiwan.
And I love how Chen “dealt” with SARS by spreading the infected Heping hospital staff to other hospitals.
Face it, all of these challenges have been met by the current administration with not much more than apathy and incompetence.
[quote=“Mr He”]Poagao, will the KMT do a better job?
Doubt it.[/quote]
I don’t see how they could be much worse. Politicians aren’t as clearly divided into the “good/evil” categories as most people on this board like to think. I might end up voting for Lien/Soong. Despite my misgivings about their personal moral characters, at least they know how to lead. Foreigners often seem to wonder how Taiwanese people can tolerate Soong even with the allegations of corruption. The answer is that most people realize that you have to be corrupt to gain any amount of success in politics here, so they vote for who they see as the most effective leader. Chen got lucky when Lien split the vote last time. Perhaps he’ll get lucky again. It won’t be because of his record that he’ll get reelected, though, it will be in spite of it. Most foreigners and ABCs (well, I should just say most foreigners, as ABCs are just as foreign as most foreigners) tend to see the KMT as selling out to China. This is the whole “Why do you hate America so much?” argument, i.e., if you don’t advocate my particular set of tactics to solve the problem, you must be working with the enemy. People assume that Lian and Song are going to hand Taiwan over to China on a platter, but why would they do that? What’s better, being a local magistrate of a Chinese province, at the beck and call of Beijing, or being the President of the ROC? No, because they don’t advocate a public declaration of independence (which wouldn’t do anyone any good, let’s be honest), they’re automatically relegated to “working with the enemy” status.
That’s my honest answer to your question, but since I know that most of the people in this forum think of the KMT as the Ultimate Evil and ready to sell out to China (“My girlfriend said so, dammit!”), while the DPP is full of repressed freedom fighters, I’ll just save you all the trouble and change my answer to:
Of course not! What was I thinking? Four more years for Chen and Lu then. I’m sure they’ll turn things around. Go get 'em, tiger!
No matter, it was and still is a waste of public funds.