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Constitutional reform movement

2006-04-26 / Taiwan News /

We urge all Taiwanese to actively and rationally discuss the draft proposal for a new constitution released by a coalition of civic and social reform organizations yesterday.

The 124-article draft proposal offered by 21st Century Constitutional Reform Alliance certainly requires considerable refinement and rethinking, but we believe that it can serve as "a platform for public discussion."

The coalition, which includes over 40 social movement, civic reform and professional organizations, carried out over 15 forums and "constitution club" seminars around Taiwan and numerous internal meetings over a period of seven months in the process of formulating this first draft.

As noted alliance convenor Hung Yu-hung, the proposal is an "initial draft" offered to Taiwan's political parties, civic and social groups, and lawmakers as well as citizens for discussion.

We believe that it is a positive sign that the first proposed draft for a thoroughly revamped constitution in the current period of constitutional re-engineering has been drafted by a broad alliance of organizations from Taiwan's emerging and maturing civil society and not by the major political parties.

The past seven exercises in constitutional reform since 1990, including six sets of amendments or additional articles during the 12-year rule of former president and ex-Kuomintang chairman Lee Teng-hui and last June's revisions under the DPP government, have all been driven by strongman politics or by the two leading parties.

Civic groups provided much of the external impetus for the passage of last June's amendments by the KMT and DPP, which included a halving of the Legislative Yuan from 225 to 113 seats, the elimination of the National Assembly and the introduction of ratification of proposed constitutional changes by national citizen referendum.

President Chen Shui-bian's call in September 2003 for the DPP to work with Taiwan society to "hasten the birth of a new Taiwan constitution" by 2008 initiated this "second wave" of constitutional re-engineering, but has stressed that this phase would be driven "from the bottom to the top."

Human rights are first

The completion of this draft, despite and perhaps because of its imperfections, offers grounds for encouragement that the hope for a citizen-driven constitutional reform process can be realized and allow Taiwan to become a progressive example to Asia and the rest of the world.

Moreover, we believe the content of the CRA's draft framework demonstrates that Taiwan's civil society has sufficient idealism, maturity and tolerance to lead such a re-engineering process that will combine the processes of deliberative as well as representative democracy.

The idealism of the social and civic reform organizations participating in the CRA's effort is displayed by their decision to enshrine "human rights" as the guiding principle and title of the leading 42-article chapter of the first draft constitution in an implicit declaration that the defense and deepening of human rights of our sovereign citizens and other residents of Taiwan takes priority over the interests of the state.

In other words, the arrangement affirms the democratic principle that the state or country exists for the welfare of the people, not the reverse and manifest the spirit of the Constitution as "a love letter from the people to the country."

Moreover, the content of this leading chapter includes offers a coherent and comprehensive framework for a "human rights" state based on progressive principles.

Besides the affirmation of "first generation" liberties (such as freedom of expression, press, thought, assembly and personal dignity), the draft upholds civic and social rights including affirmation of the right of social welfare and survival, labor rights to form unions, engage in collective bargaining and to strike and for co-determination, protection for youth and children, and bans against child labor and any form of slavery.

The draft enshrines the rights of indigenous persons and cultural pluralism.

It also upholds the principles of non-discrimination based on nationality, age, language, ethnicity class, political views and gender and gender preference and explicitly offers a right of asylum for victims of political persecution.

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