The Transitional Justice Commission no doubt has been dealt a severe blow after the scandal last month in which former deputy chairman Chang Tien-chin (張天欽) allegedly proposed to manipulate public opinion against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) New Taipei City mayoral candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜).
As a result, not only has the commission been left with no leadership following Chang’s resignation and chairman Huang Huang-hsiung’s (黃煌雄) departure on Oct. 6, it has brewed political confrontation, fomented distrust and caused people to question its credibility — a far cry from its solemn mission of moving the nation toward reconciliation.
Disappointment would be an understatement to describe the feelings of many who care deeply about democracy, particularly those affected by the White Terror era and their families, who had high expectations the commission would establish historical truth and redress miscarriages of justice.
Granted, the commission earlier this month exonerated 1,270 people who were convicted during the White Terror era, but more daunting tasks lie ahead for it to “regain the public’s trust,” in the words of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) this month.
However, the commission is reeling from the Chang incident.
Unnamed commission members last week said that plans to set up a psychotherapy center for people with psychological trauma caused by political repression during the White Terror era had been scrapped due to a lack of funding. Chang’s remarks made it difficult to obtain funding from the Executive Yuan, the sources said.
Meanwhile, the commission acknowledged that it had been unable to pay staff salaries for the first few months after it was established in May.
Last month, a commission source said that it was planning to create a transitional justice database to create historical profiles of political cases during the authoritarian era and identify those who violated human rights.
Such a database would be of significant importance, as it would help fill in details of many cases where those who were persecuted are known, but the perpetrators are not.
However, the situation looks bleak for an agency tasked with responsibilities such as removing remnants of the nation’s authoritarian past, restoring historical truth and facilitating social reconciliation.
While an inefficient and ineffective Transitional Justice Commission might be what some with links to the authoritarian period secretly hope for so the guilty cannot be identified and held accountable for their actions, paving the way for a one-party authoritarian system to make a comeback, the nation — having made it so far thanks to the blood, sweat and tears of democracy pioneers — must not allow a regression.
“Democracy will not take a backward step and neither will transitional justice,” Tsai promised this month.
Time and a strong sense of determination are vital so that transitional justice can be truly implemented.
Hopefully, Tsai’s administration can walk the walk by making sure the commission does not devolve into a paper tiger without claws, like the Control Yuan.
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