The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Standing Committee yesterday confirmed former New Taipei City deputy mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) as the party’s candidate for New Taipei City mayor.
Hou has the political experience: He has served as New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) deputy from 2010, and was acting mayor preceding the 2016 presidential election.
However, the nomination is problematic for the progress of transitional justice, which Taiwan needs to go through to determine the truth about tragic events in the Martial Law era, when the then-KMT regime was seeking to repress Taiwanese. Contrition and a willingness to acknowledge the truth of what occurred has to be a huge part of the transition.
In an interview last month, Hou commented on his role as Taipei Police Department Criminal Investigation Division head and the tragically failed 1989 attempted arrest of democracy activist Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), offering a controversial mischaracterization of the incident.
Hou had led a group of police, at the behest of the KMT regime, to Deng’s Freedom Era Weekly magazine office. Deng locked himself in his office and set himself alight, refusing to be taken alive.
During the interview, Hou called the operation a rescue attempt that was “not completely successful.”
It was not a rescue attempt. Hou and the officers under his charge had gone to arrest Deng for having the audacity to print a proposal for a constitution for a “Republic of Taiwan,” an action the KMT regime deemed seditious.
It is important that transitional justice does not become a partisan tool for attacking political foes. The KMT should be allowed to move on and Hou’s part in carrying out the orders of his superiors in the dark days of the White Terror — which technically ended in 1987 with the lifting of martial law — and in the immediate aftermath can be mitigated to an extent by historical context.
He was, after all, only following orders, which in itself, is historically a problematic line of defense. However, to move forward, contrition and acknowledgment are needed.
Hou is asking voters for permission to lead one of the nation’s major cities. We need someone who is also willing to lead the conversation over what transitional justice is and how it is to be achieved.
By calling the failed arrest a “not completely successful” rescue attempt was Hou attempting to mischaracterize the truth to avoid the painful truth of his role in Deng’s death?
If so, he is betraying an inability to show the contrition that he and the KMT are going to need.
Was he disingenuously propagating the untruth that the KMT had no real culpability in the events of the White Terror era?
If so, it suggests that he is the personification of the lack of contrition and attempts to distort history that are the very things transitional justice is seeking to redress.
Or does Hou truly believe his mischaracterization?
If that is the case, then he is demonstrating that he is an unreconstructed relic of the pre-democratic era.
That the KMT has decided to field him for New Taipei City mayor suggests that it, too, remains an unreconstructed relic.
For its part in the events, the KMT can be forgiven. For its refusal to acknowledge responsibility, it cannot.
China’s supreme objective in a war across the Taiwan Strait is to incorporate Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic. It follows, therefore, that international recognition of Taiwan’s de jure independence is a consummation that China’s leaders devoutly wish to avoid. By the same token, an American strategy to deny China that objective would complicate Beijing’s calculus and deter large-scale hostilities. For decades, China has cautioned “independence means war.” The opposite is also true: “war means independence.” A comprehensive strategy of denial would guarantee an outcome of de jure independence for Taiwan in the event of Chinese invasion or
A recent Taipei Times editorial (“A targeted bilingual policy,” March 12, page 8) questioned how the Ministry of Education can justify spending NT$151 million (US$4.74 million) when the spotlighted achievements are English speech competitions and campus tours. It is a fair question, but it focuses on the wrong issue. The problem is not last year’s outcomes failing to meet the bilingual education vision; the issue is that the ministry has abandoned the program that originally justified such a large expenditure. In the early years of Bilingual 2030, the ministry’s K-12 Administration promoted the Bilingual Instruction in Select Domains Program (部分領域課程雙語教學實施計畫).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) earlier this month said it is necessary for her to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and it would be a “huge boost” to the party’s local election results in November, but many KMT members have expressed different opinions, indicating a struggle between different groups in the party. Since Cheng was elected as party chairwoman in October last year, she has repeatedly expressed support for increased exchanges with China, saying that it would bring peace and prosperity to Taiwan, and that a meeting with Xi in Beijing takes priority over meeting
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman for maritime affairs Rogelio Villanueva on Monday said that Manila’s claims in the South China Sea are backed by international law. Villanueva was responding to a social media post by the Chinese embassy alleging that a former Philippine ambassador in 1990 had written a letter to a German radio operator stating that the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) did not fall within Manila’s territory. “Sovereignty is not merely claimed, it is exercised,” Villanueva said. The Philippines won a landmark case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 that found China’s sweeping claim of sovereignty in
RSS