THIS YEAR, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government finally set its sites on the Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) Memorial Hall.
The process was more or less as follows: On April 13, then premier Su Tseng-chang (
On May 19, the Cabinet passed the proposal to abolish the Provisions Governing the Administration of the CKS Memorial Hall (國立中正紀念堂管理組織條例). Cabinet spokesperson Chen Mei-ling (陳美伶) explained that the basic Organic Act for the Organization of Central Administrative Agencies (中央機關組織基準法) clearly states that third and fourth-tier agencies don't require organic laws, only organic regulations.
The CKS Memorial Hall was thus changed to the National Democracy Memorial Hall, and the Cabinet only needed to send its decision to the legislature for reference.
From a legal point of view, there are those who are of the opinion that even though the CKS Memorial Hall was officially a fourth-tier structure, the Cabinet should still submit the case to a first-tier agency that would transfer the issue to the legislature for examination.
The organic regulations of the memorial, a fourth-tier agency, are decided by the ministry. After being ratified by the Cabinet, they still had to be sent to the legislature for reference. The legislature could then change it from a case "for reference" to a case "for review," and then not pass the proposed regulations.
At that point, there was still some room for discussion.
But the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-led Taipei City Government wanted to block the name change and raised unexpected difficulties by proclaiming the hall a temporary historical site in accordance with Article 17 of the Cultural Heritage Protection Act (文化資產保存法).
It has only been 27 years since the CKS Memorial Hall was opened to the public. Even the research group invited by the Taipei City Government to investigate if the hall would qualify as a historical site said it did not think the hall met the conditions.
Academic Han Pao-teh (漢寶德) said some people advocated listing the hall as a cultural site, and that he would perhaps be able to agree with that. But the Taipei City Government is not concerned with cultural heritage; its goal is the protection of the political significance of CKS Memorial Hall.
The DPP pushed forward, and on Nov. 6 the ministry filed an application with the Council for Cultural Affairs to make the hall a national historical site. The application was granted and the ministry then submitted a plan to the council for the monument that included replacing the inscription reading "Great neutrality and perfect uprightness" with one reading "Democracy Square" and changing the name from CKS Memorial Hall to National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.
If it hadn't been for the fact that Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) national fantasies were rejected by a majority of the Taiwanese public, and if it hadn't been shown time and again that Chiang had the blood of many Taiwanese on his hands, or if transitional justice had been implemented during his long period of rule, then we might patiently argue about the details involved in the protection of cultural heritage and the dissolution of organizations.
But based on the ongoing process of building the nation, the government should instead choose the lesser of two evils and solve the issue by listing the "temple to Chiang" as a special cultural site.
That decision should win the support of a majority of the public.
Chen Yi-shen is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
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