Two referendums were held in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

on 12 January 2008, alongside

legislative elections A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

. One (officially numbered as Question 3) concerned transitional justice and the treatment of contentious properties acquired by the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

, whilst a counter-referendum (Question 4) was initiated by the Kuomintang on alleged corruption in politics.國民黨抵制追討黨產公投
BBC News, 31 December 2007 Although a majority of voters voted in favour of both proposals, voter turnout was only 26%, well below the 50% required to make the results valid. The legislative elections had a turnout of around 58%.

Questions

Proposal 3

This question was officially championed by former premier Yu Shyi-kun.

Proposal 4

This question was officially championed by former finance minister

Wang Chien-shien Wang Chien-shien (; born 7 August 1938) is a Taiwanese politician who is the founder of the New Party. He was finance minister of the Republic of China from 1990 to 1992 and is the chairman of the Chinese Management Association (CMA) (since 19 ...

Campaign

The Kuomintang urged voters to boycott both referendums to prevent them from reaching the 50% voter turnout needed to for validate the result, and there was much pre-election controversy over the format and structure of the balloting. Initially, the Kuomintang was in favor of a two-step balloting system where voters would vote for the legislative elections and then for the referendum, while the DPP was in favor of a one-step system in which voters would get all four ballots to vote. The final system was a one-step, two-table system in which voters would get the ballots at separate tables but would mark the ballot papers together.

Results

References

External links

Ballot specimens from the Central Election Commission

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080117122502/http://vote2008-1.nat.gov.tw/en/R0/00000000000.html Results of the two referendum questions from the Central Election Commission
Government Information Office explanation on the referendum
{{Authority control Transitional justice referendum 2008 referendums 2008 transitional justice Transitional justice