Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) needs more than the “classes on social skills or diplomatic etiquette” that he said his aides want him to take.
Being a “loose cannon” — as foreign media outlets described him after the diplomatic gaffe over the gift of a watch from British Minister of State for Transport Susan Kramer — or eccentric can be refreshing in politics, where sly remarks and posturing manners are the mainstream, but what is worrying about Ko is more than his faux pas.
People have praised his talent for self-correction and public, no-holds-barred apologies, which are rarely seen in Taiwanese politicians. Insofar as Ko emphasized standard operating procedures and efficiency in administration, it is not difficult to imagine him not being troubled at all by what he probably considers to be mannerisms (while some attribute the characteristics to Asperger syndrome, which Ko himself says he has). However, his recent remarks on colonization being positively related to progress — which left many gasping — has exposed a mentality that embodies Taiwan’s predicament: a lack of a sense of history, and the entailing nonchalance over how people had suffered under past repression.
The colonization talk was not the first shocking remark — in terms of historical consciousness and democratic values — that Ko has made, and it will probably not be the last.
Just days ago, the mayor called the current wiretapping permit application system “a hindrance to investigation” and said police officers should be allowed to “act first, report later.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) said the proposal trampled human rights, and said Ko might have regretted that he could not meet former prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) — who was forced out of office after being convicted of charges related to wiretapping Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) — earlier.
While campaigning, Ko said that he held former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) rule in high regard, acclaiming the then-government’s “integrity.” Many, including Tuan, took offense at Ko’s misplaced praise, reminding Ko that the atrocities of the White Terror were not restricted to a single ethnic group or political stance, but affected all Taiwanese.
“The victims were not only those who had been murdered, jailed or forced into exile, but all Taiwanese who were deprived of their rights and had their minds straitjacketed,” Tuan said. “And the more dreadful damage was the domestication and self-hypnosis of Taiwanese, who even now, in a Stockholm syndrome-like manner, hail the pillagers with gratitude for offering us what had in the beginning belonged to us.”
The repression and discrimination exemplified by colonization were similarly unjust in essence, and should not be justified by any “modernization,” which arguably was a side effect of the rule. History shows that colonization cannot be desultorily simplified as causally contributing to “laudable outcomes,” as Ko did.
Ko’s remarks and their implications ironically echo China’s line that economic development and “harmony” trumps democratic self-rule, which Beijing claims is incompatible with “Chinese culture,” as Singapore — a model both the Chinese government and Ko have hailed as an ideal — has shown with its semi-authoritarian rule.
What Ko needs are history and social science classes to familiarize him with the nation’s development as well as its price, and both its modernization and the exploitation it suffered. His lack of knowledge of these issues is also a consequence of state repression during a certain period of this nation’s history.
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