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Military drops roll calls, drills in new reform campaign

In a bid to eradicate the military mentality of blindly worshiping those with political power, Taiwan's army on Armed Forces Day initiated a military education reform that included simplifying the daily ceremonies which each battalion has to rehearse and ending the chanting of slogans as well as morning and evening roll calls and drills.

Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (李傑) substituted for President Chen Shui-bian (陳水 扁), who is overseas, in leading yesterday's Armed Forces Day ceremony. The Ministry of Defense explained that the Legislative Yuan passed a resolution to reduce slogan chanting and the Ministry of National Defense decided to implement the resolution starting this month. Also abolished were drills in which soldiers had to read military lectures aloud.

Pan-green legislators supported these moves, but also called for the national anthem to be changed at the same time. Chen had already changed a slogan reference to the Republic of China to refer to "the people of Taiwan," but this is a moot point now that no slogans are to be chanted.

A ministry official revealed that ruling party legislators had asked his agency to reform military ceremonies many times, but because of reasons related to unification and the Three Principles of the People, these ideas had been rejected while former Minister of Defense Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明) was in office.

The official said that after Lee took office and reviewed past practices, it was felt that even within the ruling party there were differences of opinion about slogans. So at the suggestion of Chen Pan-chi (陳邦治), head of the ministry's General Political Warfare Bu-reau, it was decided to notify each battalion on Aug. 31 that the chanting of slogans and reading the military drill aloud would be formally scrapped.

Military analysts said that recent years' reforms have already transformed the military from a force serving a political party to a military serving the nation. This transformation has included the departure from military ranks of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) branch organizations, which began before the 2000 transfer of presidential power.

"The changes to the political warfare system have been the most successful reforms in the peaceful revolution of the armed forces," said Su Chin-Chiang (蘇進強), secretary-general of the National Cultural Association.

"The system used to be the mechanism by which the KMT kept control over the military's top leaders. Under the reforms of the past four years, it has become a system that concentrates on providing cultural services and relaying information within the armed forces. In the next stage of reform, the military will desinicize and develop new military principles," Su said.

Su stressed that desinicizing the propaganda of the army, air force and navy amounted to a concrete change and showed the military's intent to undertake serious reforms.

Su, who is also a military expert and former National Security Council advisor, said that the armed forces are equipped with modern weaponry but still train using 30-year-old techniques. Under retrenchment, he said, military strategy was being forced to change too quickly, with the result that the expertise of middle- and high-ranking officers simply couldn't keep pace.
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