On July 15, the military honor guards’ “handover ceremony” at the Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) was performed outdoors for the first time on Democracy Boulevard outside the main hall — rather than in front of former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) statue inside the main hall.
The 15-minute ceremony is performed once every hour on the hour from 9am to 5pm on the boulevard.
However, the relocation has caused much criticism, with some people saying the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s move is “interfering with the military honor guards.”
Would the military honor guards really die of heat after performing outdoors for 15 minutes under the sun at the CKS Memorial Hall? What about the military honor guards performing outdoors at the mausoleums of Chiang and his son former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in Taoyuan’s Dasi District (大溪) and at the martyrs’ shrines? Would they not die of heat too? And what about the military troops at training centers? Don’t the military honor guards and troops across Taiwan stay outdoors under the sun for more than 15 minutes? They surely do.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the pan-blue camp say that the DPP government’s withdrawal of the military honor guards’ handover ceremony from the CKS Memorial Hall was done for purely ideological reasons.
However, if this logic is valid, by the same logic the KMT’s practice of treating Chiang Kai-shek, a notorious murderer, as a great leader and sending the military honor guards to salute his stature every day is also ideologically driven.
The pro-unification camp often ridicules new military recruits as being “strawberry soldiers” — soft and easily bruised. Now, the military honor guards at the CKS Memorial Hall merely perform outdoors for 15 minutes, and no longer have to stand on guard inside the hall. So how can they be abused in this way? What about the military honor guards at other sites? Do they not also perform regularly outdoors under the sun?
The military is facing a serious labor force shortage. Why do we not return the elite military honor guards to the troops to train new military recruits? How many resources have already been wasted on the handover ceremony at the CKS Memorial Hall over the past 44 years, and what good do such performances do to Taiwan’s defense and security? The KMT is the master of political ideology, is it not?
The best solution to the problem is to reduce the duties of the military honor guards, who should only be responsible for receiving foreign dignitaries, while other guards across Taiwan should be abolished.
Since this is also the case in Europe, the US, China, Japan and many other countries, why should Taiwan be an exception? Why should the military honor guards also continue to salute Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo at the mausoleums in Dasi?
Teng Hon-yuan is a university professor.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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