It is encouraging to see transitional justice’s winds of change are finally blowing through the nation’s campuses with efforts to rid them of the residue of authoritarianism.
National Chengchi University in January approved a motion to establish a committee to decide whether statues of Chiang Kai-Shek (蔣介石) should be removed from the school. National Sun Yat-sen University did the same the following month, when it announced it would to set up a task force to review the fate of a Chiang statue on its campus in Kaohsiung.
Chengchi authorities, responding to their students’ calls, late last month passed another motion to set up a separate committee to review the school anthem, the lyrics of which are filled with propaganda for party-state ideology.
The anthem contains lines such as: “Carrying out the Three Principles of the People (三民主義) is my party’s mission” and “Developing the Republic of China [ROC] is my party’s responsibility” — with the “party” clearly referring to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which founded the school in 1927 in Nanjing, China, to train party leaders.
According to the anthem committee convener, Lin Yuan-huei (林元輝), there is a need for the university’s administration to keep pace with progress and changes in values so that students “will be more willing” to sing the school’s anthem.
Suggestions received so far include changing the lyrics to “Implementing democracy and law and order are our mission,” and “Safeguarding freedom and human rights are our responsibility.”
The existence of Chiang statues on campuses and school anthems promoting a party-state mindset are the abnormal products of the nation’s authoritarian past. The universities deserve applause for showing a willingness to contribute to the nation’s democratization.
Compared with the two universities, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government appears to be dragging its feet in implementing fully fledged transitional justice.
Talk of transitional justice has been a popular catch-phrase of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, and earlier this month at an event marking the nation’s first Freedom of Speech Day, Tsai affirmed her administration’s commitment to the pursuit of democracy, fairness and justice, by saying that the “Taiwanese are a people of democracy and freedom.”
Tsai’s words sound sincere, but words that are not followed by concrete actions are just words.
Other than pushing through the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) in August year to deal with the KMT’s ill-gotten assets, the government has done little else toward pursuing transitional justice and consolidating the nation’s democracy.
The public’s disappointment with the Tsai administration was clearly reflected in a poll released yesterday by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation that found 59.1 percent of respondents were unhappy with the government’s performance.
The public’s disappointment is also evident by veteran pro-democracy campaigner Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) announcement on Monday last week that he would launch a hunger strike tomorrow to protest the DPP’s deliberate delay in amending the Referendum Act (公民投票法).
If Chengchi, a school founded by Chiang, dares to undertake moves to “overthrow” values of its founder, why cannot the Tsai government be more pro-active in eliminating the remnants of authoritarian practices, such as the Republic of China’s (ROC) national anthem, based on a KMT song.
The winds of change are sweeping the nation’s campuses. Hopefully the breeze will also be felt by the Tsai government so that the public is not left with the belief that she is not really interested in implementing transitional justice.
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