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DPP seeks to fix transitional justice
mistakes
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
Chairman Su Tseng-chang, left, and executive director of the DPP’s Policy
Research Committee Joseph Wu listen during a forum on transitional justice
organized by the party in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP)
use of transitional justice as a campaign tool to gain favor in the past cost it
the public’s support over the issue, a senior DPP official said yesterday.
“We did use it more as a campaign tool instead of treating it as one of the most
important tasks that we must achieve. In the end, supporters lost confidence in
our ability to handle the issue,” said Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), executive director of
the DPP’s Policy Research Committee.
Wu and DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) were among a handful of DPP officials
in attendance at a forum on transitional justice organized by the party.
The review of the DPP’s efforts on transitional justice, including history and
education, as well as the judicial and law enforcement system, concluded that
the party had only addressed the issue “sporadically and randomly” when it was
in power between 2000 and 2008, Fu Jen University historian Chen Chun-kai (陳君愷)
said.
While one obstacle for the party’s efforts was clear — it has never had a
legislative majority — “the DPP has simply not done enough,” Chen said.
Citing the 228 Massacre as an example, Chen said that despite the recognition of
the incident as a national holiday and enactment of various laws on victim
compensation, “it remains a historical event, with victims and no perpetrators.”
“Transitional justice is more than the transformation of systems, it is the
transformation of values. Without them, it will be impossible to fix a society
in which the cancer cells of the previous authoritarian regime can still be
found everywhere,” Chen said.
Li Fu-chung (李福鐘), a professor at National Chengchi University’s Graduate
Institute of Taiwan History, listed four tasks for the DPP to achieve if it
returns to power.
First, the DPP should collaborate on transitional justice with civil society,
something it had not done when it was in power, Li said. Second, laws related to
it, such as those within the draft political party act (政黨法) and regulations
dealing with the White Terror period, should be a priority.
The third task would be to make it easier to carry out constitutional
amendments, which Li said was the main source of political vitality in the
1990s. The high threshold for constitutional amendments had “frozen” Taiwan’s
political structure since then, he said.
Li said the fourth task would be the declassification of more historical
documents and files, adding that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration
had tightened regulations on document declassification and disclosure since
2008.
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