History can't excuse KMT's failings

By Liang Wen-chieh

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou recently said that issues such as the KMT's disputed assets, party members adding the years they worked for the KMT to their civil-service employment records (to gain pension benefits) and the 18 percent preferential interest rate enjoyed by retired public servants are "the products of the party-state era," stressing that "our country will be in a complete shambles if we continue to look into these issues, for they result from a unique situation."

Ma's remarks are not entirely unreasonable, for any country that has gone through a revolution, become independent or democratized must deal with how to evaluate the previous era. However, a transformed society should avoid rejecting the achievements of the previous era based on what is deemed wrong today, because both the standards for right and wrong, and the value systems of the former and current societies might be totally incommensurable. A lack of shared concepts between different eras may mean that we cannot compare the two and that even understanding the earlier period may be difficult.

However, does this apply to all societies in transition? Is social transition sufficient reason to excuse past crimes? The answer lies in whether a society in transition has reached a point at which its current status has become incommensurable with the past.

If we use present-day criteria to evaluate the performance of the Kangxi emperor of the Qing Dynasty, he looks every inch the dictator. Although he believed that "human life is so important that we cannot ignore it," he did not have the same concept of human rights that is popular today. He was in favor of extracting confessions by means of torture, and the verdict depended on whether the criminal was a relative, a member of the aristocracy or a wise man. His thought-control campaign was never relaxed, and political opponents were often put behind bars without trial and sentenced to death by dismemberment for the flimsiest reasons.

The reason we still believe he was a wise emperor is that we recognize the value systems of the two eras as being completely incommensurable. In an era in which people were treated as the subjects rather than the masters of a nation, an emperor who always reviewed every death sentence with the utmost care fulfilled all demands that era placed on a ruler.

We should apply stricter standards when it comes to former presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo who, despite the fact that their actions were conducted during the Martial Law Era and the Period of Mobilization for the Suppression of Rebellion, were subject to the same Constitution that we are today.

There is really not that much difference between the criminal and civil law of the Republic of China (ROC) of 40 years ago and the laws we have now, and textbooks of the Three Principles of the People back then taught the democratic rule of law, just as it is taught today. Even more importantly, in contrast to the absolute authority of the Chinese Communist Party, which is written into China's Constitution, there is nothing in the ROC Constitution that gave the KMT the right to appropriate state property, or use state funds for the party.

In other words, we live within the same value system as the two Chiangs, and illegal or inappropriate conduct should be treated as such, whether it occurred then or in the present day. Of course, during those times relatives of the ruling family, such as Chiang Ching-kuo's son Chiang Hsiao-wen, considered themselves to be above the law, and the KMT could blatantly appropriate state property as their own. Political criminals would sometimes disappear suddenly without a trace, as in the case of alleged bank robber Wang Ying-hsien. They would be beaten to death in custody as police tried to extract a confession.

These incidents were illegal, and the only reason no one stood up and said as much was that they didn't dare. The two Chiangs were indeed dictators, and there is no comparison between them and the Kangxi emperor: The reason we can say this is precisely because they went against the laws and ethical standards of their own time, which remain the same today. This is still true regardless of the fact that they might not have been as cruel as the Kangxi emperor had been.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has done a very good job of categorizing different periods, and we have become used to referring to the recent past in terms of the end of martial law, the first free elections, and the transition of power from the KMT to the DPP when President Chen Shui-bian was made head of state, to such an extent that these periods are seen as distinct from each other.

This kind of distinction may well make sense when talking about the Russian revolution or the establishment of the People's Republic of China, but in Taiwan's case, democratization has merely been a process of increasing political freedoms and a change in governing parties.

We may well think our society is very different from the one we had during the martial law period, but in fact 99 percent of the laws we have now were made prior to democratization: Social relations, our value system, our view of history and the distribution of money and power have remained the same.

If there is a difference, it is that we now have the courage to speak up, and I hope that we can use the standards of that era (also the current era's) to seek justice for any illegal behavior that happened at the time. This is a basic requirement. We cannot, we should not, use the party-state as an excuse to obstruct this.

Liang Wen-chieh is a former deputy director of the DPP's policy coordination committee and a doctoral candidate in the London School of Economics and Political Science.