Another KMT Carpetbagger Symbol Bites the Dust in Taipei

Saturday October 30, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

The Taipei District Court recently found three DPP Taipei City Councilors (Liu Yao-ren, Chuang Ruei-hsiung and Huang Hsiang-chun) not guilty of defacing and/or destroying a historical Taiwan monument, after The trio had last year climbed up on the Jingfu Gate and white-washed the recently repainted KMT party emblem.

Prosecutors who had made the charge were no doubt trying to curry favor with President Ma. Or they perhaps wished to defend the KMT pro-Sinification push of Taiwan that Ma Ying-jeou had started since he became president. Taipei City Government (now under Mayor Hau Lung-bin) had helped in this charge. The Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lee Yong-ping had made the original accusation when he said that the three councilors were taking the law into their own hands.

What was actually revealed however was that the carpetbagger KMT were the guilty culprits both in defacing the historical monument and in taking the law into their own hands.

The Jingfu Gate dates over 100 years back to the Qing Dynasty-- a long way back before even the Japanese era when Taiwan was Japan's model colony.

In 1966 when Taiwan was a one-party state, the KMT painted their political emblem on the gate (isn't that defacing a historical monument?) when it was being repaired. Such an act could be compared to a political party like the Republican Party in the US painting its party symbol on something like the Lincoln Memorial. You get the picture.

A year after Ma became president in 2008, the local Taipei KMT decided they wanted to continue to stake their claim to the Qing gate and repainted the 1966 one-party state logo. End result, the real guilty ones for defacing a historical monument were the KMT, not the 3 DPP City Councilors. Something that should have been recognized in 1966, but of course back then, anyone complaining would have been tossed into jail or put on Green Island.

Kudos to the three who had the courage to challenge both Mayor Hau, and indirectly the Sinification program of Ma Ying-jeou. There are a lot more one-party state KMT party emblems that need to be removed before Taiwan can really be Taiwan and the carpetbaggers sent packing.