Taiwan needs reform to become sovereign nation: President Chen

Speaking at a lecture organized to commemorate the late chairman of Chen’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Huang Hsin-chieh, Chen told the crowd after a speech on Japanese constitutional reform from a visiting Japanese professor that Japan was an independent sovereign country but its sovereignty was not as fully fledged as other nations.

Japan’s constitution does not allow the nation to have the same sovereign rights as other nations as it does not allow it to go to war on other countries, a legacy of its defeat in the Second World War.

The president said he hoped Japan would undergo further constitutional reform to become a normalized nation.

In the same way, Chen continued, Taiwan also was an independent sovereign country but it had no means of enjoying 100 percent national sovereignty. Taiwan also needed to become a normalized complete nation, he said.

“Of course we also need to take a step further and probe the existing constitution to complete real constitutional reform,” the president said.

Chen said the most pressing democratic issue in Taiwan was constitutional reform.

By this he meant democratically creating a new constitution that was appropriate to the times, with an appropriate structure and function; a constitution that protected human rights, increased government efficiency and improved Taiwan’s national competitiveness.

He said the Legislature in August passed various resolutions relating to constitutional reform, such as halving the number of seats in the Legislature, legalizing referendums and abolishing the National Assembly. Once these were put to the vote by the National Assembly next year, the first stage of constitutional reform would be complete, Chen said.

The second stage of constitutional reform involves issues such as whether the Central Government should adopt a Cabinet system or presidential system. The island also needed to consider whether it should cut its existing five branches of government to three branches, cut the legal minimum voting age to 18-years-old, or maintain a system of compulsory military service. The second stage of constitutional reform would also address aboriginal issues, the rights of workers and fundamental human rights issues, Chen said.

“Taiwan needs actual constitutional reform and not just reform on paper,” Chen said.

The president repeated his promise to garner the opinions of opposition political leaders and social groups to build a national consensus on the direction future constitutional reform would take.

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