Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Sunday criticized President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration and accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of turning the nation into an “authoritarian state.”
Putting aside the paradoxical and seemingly satirical nature of a former president, whose administration arguably caused the public discontent that led to the Sunflower movement in 2014, denouncing a president who is celebrated worldwide for her protection of democracy, Ma’s statements should be explored one at a time.
Ma said that the DPP established the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee “to control the assets of the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT].”
However, the committee was established to investigate the origins of assets held by the state during the Martial Law era, many of which were illegally acquired to the detriment of the public. That the state and the KMT were one and the same during the decades-long period in Taiwan’s history is the very reason that the committee exists in the first place.
It is not run by the DPP and it is chaired by New Power Party Legislator Lin Cheng-feng (林峰正).
“That an opposition party’s assets would be controlled by the ruling party is rarely seen anywhere in the world,” Ma said.
Perhaps Ma should be reminded that a party guilty of committing atrocities and grave violations of human rights being permitted to exist after a nation’s democratization is rarely seen anywhere in the world. The KMT’s continued existence means that it has an important responsibility to correct its past injustices.
Ma on March 7, 2012, apologized for the abysmal treatment of democracy pioneers by the former authoritarian KMT regime and promised to press on with efforts to unveil the truth behind past tragedies. He stressed the government’s efforts to compensate victims of the 228 Massacre and White Terror era, and promised to carry out transitional justice.
However, on Sunday he criticized the DPP government’s efforts to exonerate people who suffered political persecution at the hands of the KMT.
More than 400 people exonerated by the Transitional Justice Commission at the end of last year were Chinese Communist Party undercover agents, he said.
If those people were indeed Chinese agents, then how should the public view the private meetings between Chinese officials and Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), former KMT chairperson Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) or other KMT officials and lawmakers over the past few months?
The DPP government has amended national security laws specifically against such secretive meetings that threaten Taiwan’s democracy.
Most democracies, including the US, have treason laws, and the lack of any such law was previously used by pro-unification supporters to sell off Taiwan’s hard-fought democracy for personal gain.
The Taiwan Area Victims of Political Persecution Mutual Aid Association on Monday lambasted the DPP, saying that the new law “severely infringes upon the freedom of thought and speech, and is a potential menace to those who publicly affirm the belief that Taiwan and China should be unified peacefully.”
That is perplexing, as the results of a poll published on Jan. 9 showed that more than 80 percent of Taiwanese do not accept Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula and a majority of them reject the existence of the so-called “1992 consensus” touted by Ma and the rest of the KMT.
The DPP’s efforts are aimed at ensuring that Taiwanese’s right to free speech can continue unabated, so that people such as Ma can continue to make whatever unsubstantiated comments they want about the government.
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