Abandoning responsibility
A teenager, dressed for a night out on the town, is standing at the door with one hand on the knob, just about to step outside. Instead of having a proper conversation, the kid shouts: “Dad! I’m going to karaoke — I’ll be back by midnight,” and dashes out before the parent has a chance to respond. It is less a request for permission, more a deliberate distraction.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) coalition in the Legislative Yuan has grasped the essence of this adolescent tactic all too well. Not only do they understand the decisionmaking process, they fully intend to disrupt it. This strategy is evident in their recent proposal to add new public holidays, attempting to include Guningtou Commemoration Day, New Immigrants’ Day and a makeup holiday for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Rather than fostering dialogue or building consensus, the proposal serves as a legislative ambush, bypassing debate and undermining deliberative procedures.
The KMT-TPP coalition’s reckless behavior of “forcing” a government policy into the public sphere via direct voting and the advantage of a legislative majority, absent any attempt at debate, consultation or discussion, signals the abandonment of responsibility.
The problem does not lie in the holidays themselves, but in whether there were discussions, the process of decisionmaking or social cross-examination processes involved. Without going through these stages, these holidays could only serve as tools for political manipulation to rewrite history rather than commemoration. National holidays should not be battlegrounds for ideological differences.
Such legislative maneuvers are gradually being normalized in the Legislative Yuan. Under the KMT and TPP coalition, the Legislative Yuan has turned into a political assembly line rushing to churn out products. Today, they rush to vote; tomorrow, they seize control of the narrative. Public opinion is reduced to decoration, and the procedure becomes mere installation art. With a legislative majority comes arbitrariness — they do whatever they please.
Within the legislative system, there has been a pre-existing protocol for designing public holidays concerning aspects such as the impact on labor, administrative coordination and supporting measures, and public education. If one is truly concerned about equal rights for different ethnic groups and preserving historical memories, a broad and inclusive public discussion should be held, with comprehensive consideration and impact assessment — not a forceful push simply because one holds the majority.
Shen Yan
Taipei
There was no ‘retrocession’
A few days ago, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-controlled legislature caught everyone off-guard by announcing an amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施法) to add four “new” national holidays.
They not only canceled the May 19 White Terror Memorial Day — the date in 1947 that KMT leader and dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the KMT declared martial law — from the list of national holidays, but also revived the Oct. 25 “Retrocession Day,” shielding themselves from criticism by claiming the day would now commemorate the Battle of Guningtou. These actions are aimed at hindering transitional justice, glossing over the KMT’s history of political murder and hardship to Taiwan.
“Retrocession” is a political symbol, signifying a specific historic perspective that did not originate in Taiwan.
During the Martial Law period, the KMT held a deathgrip on the right to interpret the Republic of China’s (ROC) historical perspectives. It used the term “retrocession” to cover up its defrauding of Taiwan through means that did not align with international legal conventions and procedures. It used deceptive semantics to fabricate a false narrative of justice to “reclaim” China’s “lost territory.”
Taiwan belongs to Taiwanese, and to Taiwanese, Oct. 25, 1945, was not a “retrocession,” as it was not Taiwanese who made this decision, but was instead a ploy the KMT used not long after the fires of World War II were finally extinguished and while the rest of the world was distracted by the cleanup process. The KMT unilaterally used its deceptive strong-arming to occupy our land after coming to Taiwan to accept Japan’s surrender of Taiwan and Penghu on behalf of the Allies.
The ROC’s so-called “retrocession” was really the beginning of yet another period of colonization. Not only was there no “brightness” to this “handover” — it was a shadow, ushering in a much more bleak and grim period in our history.
The KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party have their eyes firmly set on obscuring the former’s authoritarian past and to cut away at the diversity of our memorial days. They are intent on hindering Taiwan’s democratic progress.
Chiu Tzu-huan
Taipei
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