Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: KMT/Facebook
THE KMT CLAIMED 250,000 in attendance at a rally against DPP recalls held yesterday on Ketagalan Boulevard. Aerial photographs do not seem to correspond to this claim, but either way, the pan-Blue camp was out in force against the DPP in what was a de facto campaign rally for the pan-Blue camp. Both the KMT and its smaller ally party, the TPP, were present.
The KMT’s pitched rhetoric against the DPP continued. At the rally, KMT chair Eric Chu claimed that Lai was worse than either a Communist or a fascist. Likewise, the rally framed itself as against “Green Communism.”
What was new from the KMT, however, was the claim that Lai should be recalled. Such a recall would be accomplished through a referendum.
Graphic released by the KMT claiming 250,000 in attendance. Photo credit: KMT/Facebook
With this proposal, the KMT would be seeking to escalate, in that the pan-Green camp has organized a historically unprecedented wave of recalls against KMT legislators. The recalls are an expression of outrage against the KMT’s actions in the past two years, including efforts to expand legislative powers in a manner that would shift powers that normally belong to the legislative and judiciary to the executive branch, freezing the Constitutional Court from its normal operations, and cutting close to 1/3rd of the government’s operational budget.
The KMT may be hoping that another referendum can strengthen its odds of survival recalls, similar to how it has called for referendums on “martial law” and in favor of capital punishment, both of which the KMT has sought to pass through the legislature rather than through signature collection with the public. Or the KMT may be aiming to call for another set of presidential elections if the legislature is dissolved, as TPP chair Huang Kuo-chang has called for–a way to avoid that a new set of legislative elections could potentially eliminate the TPP from the legislature.
Still, it is unlikely the KMT is serious about this move. Chu proposed a referendum against Lai for his recall. It is unclear how this would work out legally and the move might require a constitutional interpretation. Yet the KMT likely does not have the numbers to organize and successfully push for a referendum against Lai either–if it did, the rally would have been many orders of magnitude larger, even if it was genuinely 250,000.
The KMT has also suggested impeaching Lai, particularly seeing as there has been global discussion of the prospect of impeaching presidents, given that US President Donald Trump faced an impeachment. Indeed, one notes that KMT legislator Luo Chi-chiang previously called for Trump’s impeachment in response to his worldwide tariffs in a social media post that was later deleted.
If what Chu meant to suggest was that the KMT should impeach Lai, the KMT does not have the numbers for this. The KMT and TPP together do not have the 2/3rd of the Legislative Yuan to motion on impeaching Lai. Even if this proceeded, the final decision would rest with the Constitutional Court. In consideration of the KMT’s efforts to freeze the Constitutional Court, justices may not look kindly on an effort to impeach the president.
What the rally does evidence, however, is the decidedly post-truth claims of the KMT. That is, the KMT has in past years sought to leverage on authoritarian nostalgia in its campaigning, appealing to its elderly base’s nostalgia for an imagined, glorious past in which Taiwan was economically prosperous and the KMT was the sole ruling party.
And yet in accusing the DPP of authoritarianism with regards to the arrest of former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je and other actions, the KMT continues to be in denial of past crimes it committed during the authoritarian period. During the authoritarian period, organizing a rally such as on Saturday would result in many years in prison for rally leaders such as Chu, TPP chair Huang Kuo-chang, former President Ma Ying-jeou, or KMT legislative caucus leader Fu Kun-chi.
Photo credit: KMT/Facebook
While KMT leaders have been fined and summoned for anti-recall rallies in the past weeks, it is hardly as though they will imminently disappear into an authoritarian legal system that would only release them years later, as broken men after torture and abuse in jail, as the KMT treated political dissidents during the authoritarian era. Likewise, Ko’s arrest on corruption charges takes place independent of the Lai administration, with much evidence of Ko’s wrongdoing provided by prosecutors. DPP politicians, even major ones such as former Taoyuan mayor Cheng Wen-tsan, who have committed similar crimes also face jail time.
In framing the DPP as having enacted “Green Communism” to rally supporters, the KMT would be leveraging not only nostalgia, but murky historical memory. After all, it is the KMT whose legislators are accused of leaking military secrets to the Chinese government, and attempting to repeal penalties for public displays of loyalty to the People’s Republic of China, such as singing the Chinese national anthem.
This all proves another way in which the KMT not only has failed to reckon with its crimes during the authoritarian period, but seeks to recast the authoritarian past so as to depict itself as the defender of democracy and the very political forces that arose from the democracy movement as, in fact, being the forces against democracy. Yet this is par for the course when it comes to would-be-authoritarians, as one has seen more broadly with the rise of authoritarian nostalgia in the region. The KMT’s actions show that Taiwan is not immune from such tendencies.