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Editorial: A nationalist canon in decay

Before dawn on Monday morning, as most people slept off the relatively low-key New Year celebrations of the night before, the Presidential Office was the scene of a flag-raising ceremony marking the 95th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of China.

For those intrigued by how national symbols are used in the urban landscape, the sight was especially curious. At the western end of Ketagalan Boulevard was the Presidential Office, a structure conceived by the Japanese from which Taiwanese were once ruled as colonial subjects. At the other was the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters, the political-party version of a colonialist monolith, now sold to the Chang Jung-fa Foundation, whose name stares incongruously toward the Presidential Office.

The decay of the power of nationalist symbols could hardly be presented in a starker manner. In days gone by, the boulevard would have been filled with dignitaries and members of the public to watch the parade and the raising of the national flag. On Monday, only a few thousand turned up, and many of those were ringers to ensure that numbers were met. Of the others, not every person could be bothered to pass the security checkpoints where security personnel searched bags for potential weapons.

And yet, some did attend, ready to express their respect to the nation's symbols, salute the flag and sing the national anthem. One group of university students -- presumably medical students -- attended the event in costumes that suggested entrails had spilled outside of their bodies. Perhaps it was a way of saying that their hearts were on their sleeves.

Even those outside the security checkpoint stood to attention at the appropriate moment -- including members of an inline skating team who were showing off their skills to anyone who was interested. Some in the crowd of no outwardly obvious political leaning sang the national anthem with gusto; others barely lip-synched the old military tune.

The KMT delegation, which gathered near the old headquarters, marched toward the Presidential Office under a banner with the characters "Chinese Nationalist Party." Their numbers were small, no more than a couple of hundred at best, including a few legislators wearing goon jackets with their names on the back.

And so it went for another year. If there was anything to learn from this year's flag-raising ceremony, it was that even the former guardians and inventors of nationalist imagery have lost interest in the ruse of supporting a national myth that has died with the despots who created it. The ceremony is now a curio, almost begging to be replaced by a ritual that can trigger something much more passionate in the average person.

The problem is that there is nothing to replace it with, not now nor in the foreseeable future. The Democratic Progressive Party's attempts to change the nationalist canon have been largely unsuccessful, exemplified by the boredom with which the public receives calls for a movement to reform that canon.

The KMT may be doing well in the polls at the moment, but the truth is that its situation in this respect is even worse: Its pugnaciousness cannot mask the fact that its ability to manipulate the nationalist symbolism it manufactured has collapsed.

The flag-raising ceremony captured that disconnect between the public and its national face beautifully. The potential for something new and representative of Taiwanese people is there, but the skill and rhetoric needed to introduce it is not.
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