Removing KMT corruption
Military veterans worldwide are given benefits after service not available to others as a reward for the danger and effort required to defend a nation.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) trained the military to be loyal to the party, not the nation. This is the true animus of a dictatorship, as is China today. Military service members are not corrupt; soldiers follow orders if they are disciplined. The nature of corruption is that the agent (the KMT) instills loyalty by corrupt means, bestowing preferential pensions and salaries upon the vulnerable.
Embedding a loyal infrastructure is one of the key aspects of a totalitarian state, which is what the Republic of China was under the KMT, with no distinction between the party and the state, as is the case in communist China today.
To maintain loyalty it is necessary to control people’s education, so enlisting teachers in the process is essential. When a party has absolute power and has been ruthless, it is easier to appoint those who are loyal or those who promise to be loyal to positions of power and give them the materials and precepts with which to instruct and fashion young minds into loyal KMT acolytes.
The ramifications of that process can be read in posts and comments to Taipei Times articles online. People who were “trained” in grade school, singing songs, intoning principles, worshiping KMT “gods,” knowing “enemies.”
Brainwashing runs deep, especially when begun at a young age. The China Youth Corps and former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) youth programs are reminiscent of totalitarian inculcation: “Train them young.”
The educational system was used to teach KMT, China and Chinese-oriented principles and attitudes. Teachers were trained what to look for, what to teach and what was right and wrong, and those who excelled in promoting the party line were rewarded or promoted.
Freedom of speech and thought were not highly valued. Intoning KMT precepts was highly valued and most of all, highly rewarded. If it sounds like communist China or North Korea, it should.
Teachers are not evil; far from it. The preferences were intended to purchase loyalty, obedience and devotion to the party. Why else would KMT membership be a factor in calculating benefits? However, the preferences were and are corrupt.
These leftover attributes of a totalitarian state need to be cleansed.
A KMT official said that it would be dangerous for the Democratic Progressive Party administration to make these changes because it could lose the next election. Ending preferential treatment would alter military loyalty and disrupt educational systems.
This is a monument to the problem — a monument to the arrogance and corruption of the KMT, to the brainwashing and influence of the KMT in government.
The judiciary is another minefield. The Taipei District Court acts mostly as a KMT court.
We have a long way to go to be truly free of KMT bonds, and removing the virus from government and life is not easy. The corruption of the KMT was woven into the fabric of Taiwanese society for 70 years, recently emphasized by the Ma administration changing textbooks and curricula to teach KMT principles and Chinese revisionist history.
It cannot be untangled in one or even five years. The process must be diligently and doggedly performed, the KMT’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
It will take courage, patience and truth, constitutional authority, justice and persistence. I believe President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has all of these qualities and we must hope that her administration has eight years to free Taiwan from communist China and its proxy, the KMT.
The KMT must die so that Taiwan can live. It has become the party’s imperative to die honorably for Taiwanese, though I have my doubts over whether there is a willingness to do so.
There will be other parties to replace the KMT’s ideology, but they will have to obey the law and they will not develop a flourishing, corrupt one-party state, and they would have to convince Taiwanese that we are better off as part of communist China.
Good luck with that.
Lee Longhwa
Los Angeles, California
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