Reading the ECFA fine print

IPS has an article on what an alliance of 20 civic groups that began in July found in the ECFA fine print:

In a report released Aug. 11, the alliance raised a long list of issues with the ECFA.

Among other things, it called for the elimination of an article in the ECFA that authorised the organisation of a bilateral "joint cross-strait economic cooperation commission" and granted the commission the power to negotiate follow-on agreements that would not require legislative review or approval.

The alliance opposed the clause on the grounds that the arrangement would transfer government authority beyond the scope of legal accountability to Taiwan’s laws or citizen monitoring.

A statute for the handling of cross-strait relations with China had actually been promulgated in 1992 and revised in 2002. But Academia Sinica Institute for Legal Studies Associate Research Prof Max Huang Kuo-chang says the statute mandated the SEF only to negotiate "pragmatic" or "technical" issues with ARATS.

"The cross-strait statute did not foresee that the SEF would be negotiating major treaties or to be ‘delegated’ powers of government on a permanent basis," he says.

But ECFA is non-political and there is no threat to Taiwan's democracy....
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