Aboriginal referendum plan backed

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on April 14, 2006. it reports that the Council of Indigenous Peoples recently declared its support to the idea of holding a referendum on demarcation of Taiwan's aboriginal constituencies.

According to Walis Pelin, head of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, the Constitution stipulates that Taiwan's indigenous peoples should be taken as a whole in constituency demarcation. However, the nation's laws in effect separate the indigenous population into two electorates, which are "plains aborigines" and "mountain aborigines". Since these laws contradict the Constitution, he supported a referendum proposed by the Saisiat aboriginal tribal council to amend the error.

The Saisiat aboriginal tribal council proposed the idea of holding a referendum in order to solve the issue of indigenous constituency demarcation. According to them, the government's decision in 1956 to separate the indigenous constituency into two groups was not adequate.