Fri, Feb 11, 2000 page12

• An old-time politician who stepped forward

  • By Linda Gail Arrigo
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  Former legislator and DPP chairman Huang Hsin-Chieh (黃信介) was laid to rest on Jan. 23 at age 72, with pomp, eulogies and respects paid by, among many others, the KMT's leading figures, including President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). DPP Legislator Shih Ming-deh (施明德), who worked closely with Huang in the 1978-1979 demo-cratic movement and went to jail with him and others of the Formosa Magazine (美麗島) organ-ization, hailed Huang as one of the prime architects of Taiwan's political reform movement.

  But now that a couple of weeks have passed, perhaps it is time to take at least a little of the shine off this hagiography.

  I cannot claim to know Huang closely, but I had opportunities to observe him and his colleagues in the democratic movement, both in their moments of strength and weakness and at times when a great deal hung in the balance.

  The man looked more real in a natural light.

  Huang was an old-time politician. He started as a city councilor from a traditional Taipei neighborhood, somehow gained property and companies, and then became a legislator-for-life in 1969 when the KMT opened a few seats for election.

  He probably could have coop-erated fully with the ruling party, but the fact that he dared to risk his neck when he was sitting pretty is what we should really appreciate.

  Other than that, he had the good sense to let others do the legwork and make the plans. Perhaps he would have hesitated if he knew all that was going on in the Tangwai [黨外, "outside the party (KMT)"] Coalition and in Formosa Magazine. But he got the respect that he wanted, because both groups were extremely important in the early phases of the democratic movement.

  The Coalition, the direct predecessor of the Democratic Progressive Party, was founded in 1978 with an office provided by Huang. The first island-wide meeting of the Coalition, to kick off the first large-scale electoral challenge to the KMT, was held on Dec. 5, 1978 and chaired by Huang -- despite heavy police surveillance.

  A foreign reporter visiting Taiwan in 1979, at the invitation of the government, asked to see Huang. Having heard there was an opposition organization, she wanted to meet its highest elected representative. Since he was going to be out of town, Huang told me to receive her. When she came to the Formosa office, Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) was there to meet with her, but she was in a huff about not seeing Huang.

  Finally I told her, it is more important for you to interview Yao or Shih, who really run the operations; Huang is a figurehead. Still irked, she passed this on to her KMT handlers and somehow the comment appeared in the news-papers.

  When Huang was on trial in March 1980 for sedition and armed rebellion (after the Kaohsiung Incident -- the Dec. 10, 1979 clash with riot police at a Formosa-organized march and rally) he cited what I had said in his own defense.

  Huang appeared defeated and demoralized in court; as with most of the other defendants, exhaustion, interrogation, isolation and threats had taken their toll. He was sentenced to 14 years, second only to Shih's term of life imprisonment.

  We should not forget that Lee Teng-hui, then mayor of Taipei, played the Taiwanese black face "hang-em high!," to the mainlander security agencies' white face, "show leniency to these poor misguided misfits!," in the propaganda campaign orchestrated by James Soong (宋楚瑜), then head of the Government Information Office.

  To me, the most moving picture of Huang, one I will never forget, was at his arrest, which he met with a seemingly casual smile, dressed in a "Sun Yat-sen suit" worn by revolutionary students of the 1930s.

  After Huang was released from prison in 1987, he became chairman of the DPP in 1988. The DPP still carried within it both all the heroics of local leaders and all the limitations of vision and discipline that were with the movement in 1978.

  It would have taken tremendous resolve to weld it into a unified and disciplined political party with a clear policy, other than opposition to the ruling party's dictatorship.

  Soon after returning to Taiwan in May 1990, after 10 years as persona non grata, I heard rumbles that Huang and his general secretary Chang Chun-Hung (張俊宏) were bringing in people without the proper party process or spirit. Those staff with labor activist roots (I had done research on labor, so I sought them out) were leaving and they were increasingly replaced by bureaucratic administrators.

  In the next year, Huang had a major conflict with the particularly militant Chiayi party branch over a nomination. The branch raised a motion to impeach Huang and in reaction, the headquarters de-recognized it.

  Still, these are not what came to the attention of the DPP membership as a whole.

  Perhaps the media conspired to make Huang look obsequious, but in his famous official interview with President Lee, he was reported as bowing deeply and saying "yin-ming, yin-ming!" (英明, 英明), which translates into something like "how illustrious!"

  This and other slips did not sit well with party members who wanted to see their chairman hold his own in dignity with the KMT.

  Near the end of Huang's second term as chairman, a greater crisis appeared. The chairman's term had been changed from one to two years (with a maximum two consecutive terms) during his tenure, and Huang argued that since he had only served three years, he should be allowed to run again. The party headquarters seemed paralyzed for nearly half a year on this inconsequential issue.

  Embarrassingly, newspaper commentaries began to call Huang a reincarnation of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his "presidency for life." Shih demurred from confronting Huang, on the grounds that as heir apparent it was not seemly.

  All of this seemed to me rather feudal, hardly a free-wheeling democratic process, and too much like the KMT. All the same, I often appreciated that Huang was plain-spoken, not given to artifice or ploys.

  At long last Huang retired to the status of elder statesman, where his reputation was intact.

  Hardliners who argue that the opposition party should not take crumbs thrown from the government's table did not like his 1996 acceptance of a post as presidential advisor, an honorary and token role that rather serves to mark the participants as "loyal," successfully co-opted.

  At least he heeded the voices within the DPP who did not want him to take a seat on the so-called National Unification Council.

  All of this may now be irrelevant to most people under the new Taiwan-oriented KMT and the new non-ideological DPP. There has been an amazing convergence in image -- but we still know who holds the money bags.

  Although the old-time heroes have served their role and have a place, now we need public issues and hard truths.

  Linda Gail Arrigo, a US citizen, became involved in the democratic movement in Taiwan in 1975. She left the DPP in 1995 and is now international affairs officer for the Green Party Taiwan.
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