penghuans fight back

TT: Penghu residents reluctant to sign for casino referendum

Although the Penghu County Government considers construction of casino resorts there an important policy objective, the plan may be postponed because an insufficient number of signatures have been collected to hold a referendum.

of course local elected representatives and non-elected government officials support the building of “casino super resorts”; they stand to make lots of money from hand outs (sorry, typo: “consultancy fees”).
it seems that local people are smarter than the electoral cannon fodder they are taken for, and realize that the advantages will go to the private companies in profits and central government in taxes, and the best islanders can hope for is a few convenience-store-style, minimum-wage jobs (unless Chinese workers are filling such jobs by 2013)

… only weeks away from the month when the referendum was to be held, the county’s Civil Affairs Bureau director, Chang Jui-tung (張瑞棟), was quoted by the … Penghu Times as saying that an insufficient number of signatures have been collected to hold the referendum.

…in the second stage, a petition with signatures from 5 percent of the people who voted in the last county commissioner election—3,521 in Penghu’s case—must be submitted for the referendum to take place.
... while both Chang and KMT Penghu County Commissioner Hu Sung-jung (胡松榮) declined to reveal the number of signatures collected at the moment [Ed. a good example of KMT’s “fair and transparent government”?], Hu said that “it will be impossible to hold the referendum in June and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.”

VftH prediction: The referendum will be passed eventually. Inspired by concerns for public good (typo: personal greed), the local officials will keep pushing and postponing until they get their way. If 99 referendum results (or pre-referendum polls) find less than 50 percent of voters support the policy, they will have repeat referenda (or just bide their time) until the ONE occasion they can pass 50 percent. Once they have the result they want, they will never go back to the electorate and ask again.
And once private firms have paid their “consultancy fees”, there will be no going back on building the casinos. Remember the N4 (fourth nuclear plant) shenanigans.