A broad majority of voters across party lines believe that transitional justice remains incomplete, according to a poll released yesterday by the Chinese-language weekly Business Today, even as potential legal challenges continue to complicate the drafting of legislation on the issue.
The survey found that 76.3 percent of respondents believe that the nation has yet to achieve transitional justice, which was defined as investigating past human rights violations and the seizure of national property by privileged groups.
Large majorities also supported investigation into two Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) “peripheral organizations,” the China Youth Corps and National Women’s League of the Republic of China.
Asked if the two groups should face examination as part of the transitional justice process, 66.6 percent of respondents said the youth corps should be examined and 72.9 said yes for the league.
Both organizations were founded shortly after the KMT government fled to Taiwan following its loss in the Chinese Civil War, with Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) wife, Soong Mayling (宋美齡), heading the league during its early years, and his son and later president, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), heading the youth group.
Of those in favor of inquiries into the two groups, more than 60 percent preferred requiring both organizations to appoint only nonpartisan people to their supervisory and governing boards to direct disbandment.
More than 66 percent of respondents identifying themselves as KMT supporters agreed that the nation had yet to achieve transitional justice, more than 58 percent said the youth corps should be subject to examination and 54 percent said the same about the league.
“Asking the people is the clearest way to decide whether or not transitional justice has been completed,” Business Today president Andy Liang (梁永煌) said, adding that transitional justice was the “last mile” in the journey toward becoming a true democratic nation.
While property controlled by the two organizations had been provided largely by the central government, their boards were still dominated by KMT members, he said, adding that the league prevented outsiders from participating or standing for board elections by requiring recommendations from two current members to be considered for admission.
New Power Party executive chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said that while the corps and the league had a history of using national resources to perform “peripheral work” for the KMT, properly designing legislation directed at the groups was crucial because of the possibility of legal challenges.
“The prickly issue now is that in the process of their development — by using improper means to obtain national property and resources — many such organizations incorporated legal personages to provide them with a protective umbrella,” he said.
Most such organizations are considered legally independent of the KMT, operating in accordance with incorporation articles, which makes targeting them more challenging than recovering “illicit assets” under direct KMT control, he said.
“When we face these problems, it is difficult to avoid the issue of retroactively targeting what has already taken place, because there will not be any correction or restoration to past injustices if you do not,” Huang added.
“Passing legislation should be relatively smooth, but what I am really concerned about are the subsequent lawsuits and allegations of violating the Constitution, because that will be the real challenge,” he said.
The survey was conducted by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research with 1,121 respondents selected through stratified random sampling. It had a margin of error of plus or minus-2.9 percentage points at a 95 percent level of confidence.
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