Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) designation as the nation’s “founding father” should be dropped, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) said yesterday, pledging to push for legislation to remove the legal requirement that Sun’s portrait be displayed in public buildings.
Gao said that Sun’s title as the nation’s “founding father” is a remnant of one-party rule under the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) authoritarian regime and ran against democratic principles.
Legal mentions of the designation are seen only in connection with the national flag, he said, citing the National Emblem and National Flag of the Republic of China Act (中華民國國徽國旗法) and the Oath Act (宣誓條例).
The National Emblem Act states that the national flag should be placed “above the portrait of the father of the nation” in government buildings, while the Oath Act mandates that officials taking the oath of office should face both the national flag and the “portrait of the father of the nation.”
While the flag is a symbol of the nation whose status is mandated in the Constitution, Sun’s status as “founding father” was crafted by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) as a tool to justify the legitimacy of his regime, Gao said, questioning why leaders should be obligated to bow before something that has no relation to Taiwan’s modern democratic society.
While requirements mandating that portraits of Chiang and his son, former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), be displayed in schools were abolished in 2002, the KMT had previously blocked legislation to drop requirements to display Sun’s portrait, Gao said.
Lee Hsiao-feng (李筱峰), a professor at National Taipei University of Education’s Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture, echoed Gao’s proposal, saying that Sun was only designated as the “founding father” in 1940 as part of an executive order intended to whitewash Chiang Kai-shek’s distortion of history and bolster his claim of being Sun’s successor.
While Sun made an undeniable contribution to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty, the revolution’s success also depended on many other people, Lee said, adding that Sun should be removed from the “cult of personality” built around him by Chiang Kai-shek.
Earlier this month, Kaohsiung Municipal Senior High School announced it would no longer make its students bow to portraits of Sun and the national flag in its end-of-semester ceremony.
Bowing three times to the flag and Sun’s portrait during school ceremonies has been a tradition for students in elementary, junior-high and high schools.
The school’s principal said the move was not politically motivated, while a student council called it a step toward depoliticizing the campus and achieving transitional justice.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS