Next referendum

There are some different comments coming out about the referendum. DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) believes the DPP and KMT should coordinate on their two referendums, because he thinks at least one must pass to avoid the international community thinking Taiwan considers itself part of the PRC.

Meanwhile, KMT legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) is calling for the referendum to be held apart from the presidential election, since the referendum is "holy" and should not be used by any party as a political tool.

As you may recall, while the KMT made this argument for the legislative election + referendum, their main argument was that holding the two elections in conjunction would result in a "disaster" and confusion, and give the DPP an excuse to declare martial law. Well, that later point is now quite clearly untrue.

Before last election, the KMT said it would "wait and see" what a mess the DPP would actually make during the the legislative election before deciding if it would boycott the UN related referendums held with the presidential election. Logically, given their prior reasoning, they should agree that holding the ballots together will not be a disaster, and push at least their own referendum.

But I think we can safely assume the real purpose of "wait and see" was just to see if the referendum would pass. Since it didn't, I predict they'll call for another boycott. If it had, they would have rallied around their referendum with such enthusiasm you might actually have believed they cared.