Second idiot of the day is DPP legislator Wang Hsin-nan, who seems to have a different version of the constitution to everyone else and wants to change it. He gets excellent support from the China Post journalists who appear equally clueless:

Ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Wang Hsin-nan yesterday proposed deleting references to unification in the constitution, spurred on by the president’s move to scrap the National Unification Council (NUC) on Monday.

Interesting idea which only has one minor flaw: there are NO references to unification in the constitution.

Update: The slightly more sane eTaiwanNews clarifies this one – there is a reference to ‘national unification’ in the introduction to the additional articles of the Constitution, which is what Wang wants to get rid of. It seems to be about as relevant as the reference to Sun Yat Sen in the intro to the original constitution though …

In a meeting with the DPP legislative council’s working group to amend the constitution, Wang, a hard line independence supporter, proposed a draft of a new constitution for Taiwan which permitted a referendum on independence or unification.

Given that his party believe Taiwan is a sovereign independent nation already, I’m not quite sure what he’s proposing here – probably because he doesn’t know either. Any constitutional change (either a change in national boundaries due to ‘independence’ of Taiwan or unification with China) is already put to a referendum. So what he wants is already in the Constitution.

President Chen Shui-bian has promised a new constitution for Taiwan but, in recent remarks, said any change to the constitution needs the approval of three-quarters of the opposition-dominated legislature before it is put to a referendum.

You’ve got to love the clueless staff in the China Post: ‘in recent remarks’? The requirements for changing the constitution are very clearly defined in the constitution. This isn’t a unilateral decison made by CSB one dreary Thursday afternoon – it’s a defined process which the whole country voted on last year.

Wang suggested having a section in the constitution forbidding changes to the nation’s sovereignty as a whole or in part — or forbidding any form of annexation from China — unless a referendum was held on the issue first and over half of voters in the referendum agreed to the change.

Not only is this already in the constitution, but Wang himself voted for the constitutional amendment to do this just over a year ago. Not only does he not know what’s in the Constitution, he doesn’t know about the ammendments that he made to the Constitution (Article 1 of the ammendments no less – hard to miss you would think)

The original constitution describes Taiwan as a different region from the mainland Chinese region.

No. It Doesn’t. The original constitution does not mention Taiwan at all (the ammendments make one reference to the Taiwan provincal government).

Besides deleting references to unification from the constitution, Wang also proposed describing the two regions as the “Republic of China” and the “People’s Republic of China.” This is effectively describing the relationship between Taiwan and China as “state-to-state” and is bound to anger Beijing.

Anger Beijing? Confuse them more likely. He’s suggesting that the ROC describes one of its regions as the ROC, and another of its regions as a state with its own completely separate constitution? My head hurts.

However, DPP lawmaker Lin Cho-shui, a senior member in the ruling party, slammed the proposal.

“This is not only unlikely to pass (through the legislature) but will strike an even more serious blow to the party in the next legislative elections,” Lin said.

“It will bury the DPP’s future.”

Finally some sense at the end of the article. However I think Lin Cho-shui is being a bit too polite about his colleague’s proposal. If Wang is one of the geniuses entrusted with handling Chen Shui-bian’s constitutional reform, then I might have to rethink whether I support the principle of it or not …