KMT Aims to Reformat Democracy Out of Taiwan
Taiwan News 2009-02-03 10:09 AM
Shortly before the Lunar New Year holiday, the restored right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government of President Ma Ying-jeou took actions that openly revealed its true core values. On Jan. 21, the Ministry of Education announced that the "Taiwan Democratic Memorial Hall" would be officially re-named the “Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hal" after the late KMT autocrat and to restore the former name of the complex, often referred to as the "Chiang Kai-shek Temple" which was built by the KMT martial law regime after his death in April 1975 and completed in 1980 at a cost to taxpayers of over NT$600 million. After announcing this decision in compliance with a resolution passed Jan. 15 by the KMT controlled Legislative Yuan, the military honor guard for the complex was also restored on Jan. 24.
These actions culminate a series of moves by the Ma government and the KMT-controlled Legislative Yuan to reverse the May 2007 decision by the former Democratic Progressive Party government to change the controversial complex's official moniker to the "Taiwan Democracy Memorial Park."
Besides ordering the restoration of Chiang's name to the memorial park and the purging of references to "Taiwan democracy," the KMT-controlled Legislative Yuan also expunged all funds for the National February. 28th Incident Museum, established by the former DPP government on Feb. 28, 2007, in which KMT troops dispatched by Chiang brutally suppressed a spontaneous revolt against the carpetbagging KMT government under Governor General Chen Yi at the cost of over 10,000 Taiwanese lives.
The KMT controlled legislature also cut all funds for the February 28th Memorial Foundation, which was established two decades ago to manage reparations and commemorative activities for "228" victims, evidently in retaliation for historical research sponsored by the foundation which identified Chiang has bearing the main responsibility for the "228 Massacre."
The decision by the KMT-controlled Legislature and the Education Ministry effectively trampled on Ma's election campaign promise to search for a solution to the dispute over the then DPP government's reorganization of the memorial through a process of "citizen deliberation."
Nevertheless, a presidential spokesman on Jan. 25 defended the restoration by claiming that the DPP government's name change had been "illegal" and that the government had the responsibility to “restore the dignity of the law."
Leaving aside the questionable claim without a court judgment that the reorganization and renaming of the memorial and its management organization was "illegal," the underlying issue is the constitutional and moral validity of the arbitrary decision by the KMT martial law state to require taxpayers to pay huge sums to build and maintain a temple to worship a murderous dictator and thereby violate the people's constitutional freedom of religion.
Honoring a Mass Murderer
The KMT's insistence in imposing this burden on the citizens of a now democratic state is even more indefensible, especially since a mountain of formerly secret but now declassified documents and related historical research have abundantly shown that Chiang bore ultimate responsibility for the massacre of over 10,000 Taiwanese in the suppression of the "228 Incident" and directly ordered in his own hand the execution or imprisonment of hundreds of progressive Taiwanese and newly arrived mainlanders during the decades of KMT "white terror" on the grounds of being "seditionists" or Chinese Communist “bandit spies."
In our view, the former DPP government acted within formal legal bounds and, even more, in line with the values of substantive or transitional justice and international standards of respect for human rights.
Quite simply, there is absolutely no legitimate room in a democratic country for a state-funded and maintained feudal temple for the worship of a dead dictator, an edifice which stands today as a daily reminder of pain to victims or survivors of the "228" or "white terror" repression and an arrogant negation of the Taiwan people's hard-won democracy and freedom.
The decision to restore an unnecessary "honor guard" and the vengeful action by KMT legislators against the 228 Memorial Foundation tears away the spurious excuse of "upholding the dignity of the law" and exposes the true intent of the re-glorification of Chiang Kai-shek as a political decision aimed at reversing the process of Taiwan's democratization and the discovery of our history and reimposing the KMT's mixture of great Chinese nationalism and authoritarianism as a state religion.
Even though most Taiwan citizens may be numb to the significance of this controversy, it is also unlikely that their memories can be so easily reformatted after two decades of relative freedom of information and thought.
Taiwan's democracy is bearing a heavy price for both the DPP's fatal delay in promoting transitional justice, but Ma and his party will not profit from their own stubborn refusal to bear its full responsibility for "228" and the white terror and their inability to confront and to transcend their own authoritarian past.
After all, the KMT's decision to reglorify a dead dictator will undermine its own international credibility and shut the door on any chance that it could have offered an alternative to PRC authoritarianism.
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