Nearly three months after the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) cleared the legislative floor, the line-up of a nine-member transitional justice promotional committee is finally taking form.
On Tuesday, Premier William Lai (賴清德) nominated former Control Yuan member Huang Huang-hsiung (黃煌雄) as chairman of the committee, which is charged with several grand missions, including opening up political archives, removing authoritarian symbols, preserving historical sites of injustice and redressing past miscarriages of justice.
The public’s immediate reaction to Huang’s nomination was generally welcoming. Huang, 74, is dedicated to researching the nation’s authoritarian past, including the 228 Incident and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) assets.
A major reason his nomination did not spark a knee-jerk objection from the KMT is likely because he is said to be one of the few public figures that both the pan-blue and pan-green camps can “tolerate.”
Huang’s cross-party support can be seen in his service as a Control Yuan member under former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT, despite him being a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member.
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the DPP also nominated Huang for a seat on the government watchdog in 2004, although Chen’s list of nominees was rejected by the then-KMT dominated legislature.
Unlike the Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, which was formed in August 2016, nomination of members of the transitional justice promotional committee has to be vetted by lawmakers.
Despite the DPP enjoying a legislative majority, what the government does not need is to stir up too much controversy over its nominees for a committee tasked with dealing with a highly sensitive political issue before it even begins operation.
That might be why President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has apparently tried to avoid appointing someone who might be immediately labeled as a “green thug,” such as the assets committee’s first chairman, Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄), a vocal former DPP lawmaker.
Another dilemma for Lai might be whether to nominate someone who has ties to the KMT.
Doing so could be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the transitional justice promotional committee as a whole might appear to be less politically biased, but on the other hand, its determination to rid the nation of authoritarian remnants and achieve long-overdue transitional justice could repeatedly be called into question, if it strikes people as being too lenient on certain issues.
However, these are simply immediate roadblocks. The real challenges will not begin until after the new committee makes its first strike.
If the assets committee’s experience dealing with KMT-affiliates and suspected ill-gotten assets is any indication, no target is easy to defang and often leads to an all-out war between the government and the targeted establishments.
Ill-gotten party assets constitute only one aspect of the transitional justice promotional committee’s mission. That means there are bound to be countless ugly wars of resistance.
However, those are inevitable battles that the nation has to go through to bring itself closer to being a fully democratized nation. They would also be a test on how serious the DPP administration is about bringing about transitional justice and whether it is willing to achieve the goal at the expense of temporary dips in its popularity ratings.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
Eighty-seven percent of Taiwan’s energy supply this year came from burning fossil fuels, with more than 47 percent of that from gas-fired power generation. The figures attracted international attention since they were in October published in a Reuters report, which highlighted the fragility and structural challenges of Taiwan’s energy sector, accumulated through long-standing policy choices. The nation’s overreliance on natural gas is proving unstable and inadequate. The rising use of natural gas does not project an image of a Taiwan committed to a green energy transition; rather, it seems that Taiwan is attempting to patch up structural gaps in lieu of
The Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office on Monday announced that they would not countersign or promulgate the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan — a first in the nation’s history and the ultimate measure the central government could take to counter what it called an unconstitutional legislation. Since taking office last year, the legislature — dominated by the opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party — has passed or proposed a slew of legislation that has stirred controversy and debate, such as extending
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators have twice blocked President William Lai’s (賴清德) special defense budget bill in the Procedure Committee, preventing it from entering discussion or review. Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) proposed amendments that would enable lawmakers to use budgets for their assistants at their own discretion — with no requirement for receipts, staff registers, upper or lower headcount limits, or usage restrictions — prompting protest from legislative assistants. After the new legislature convened in February, the KMT joined forces with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and, leveraging their slim majority, introduced bills that undermine the Constitution, disrupt constitutional
RSS