A quick correction: Huang Kuo-shu, the DPP legislator who was revealed to be an informant, did not resign his position. He did resign his DPP membership but continued to serve as an independent up until two weeks ago when his term ran out. The fact that discussion over the revelation lasted barely a week or two, and was never brought up again, really shows how much the issue of transitional justice has faded from public attention these past few years.
Thank you so much for reading closely. Albert and I appreciate this correction and we'll make a note in the copy. Do you have a sense of how Taichung voters responded to the news and the extent to which it is a source of shame? We think your larger point is right—transitional justice was a hot-button issue in 2016 and even in 2020, but it seems like it's been really put on the backburner. One of our interviewees Huang Cheng-yi made a similar point, and we hope to run it soon.
Unfortunately I don't live in Taichung or have close friends there so I can't say anything about the on-the-ground reaction. The DPP did lose his seat in this election, but this is in the context of a dramatic underperformance across all of Taichung where they went from holding 6/8 seats to 2/8. (This is actually a hugely underrated storyline of the 2024 election, but it would probably take an entire blog post to discuss!)
I would say that the general consensus in Taiwanese politics-nerd discussions I've seen is that Huang would have kept the seat, or at least come much closer to keeping it, if he had run for re-election even with the scandal. Of course this is a sticky counterfactual because you could argue that a major reason why the scandal faded away so fast was because Huang immediately promised to retire from politics at the end of his term, so there was no longer any electoral value in attacking him for it.
It sounds like Taiwan essentially adopted the Spanish model! And for similar reasons. In Spain too the left essentially never had the juice, until recently, to pick fights with the right over issues of historical memory. It simply wasn't worth expending political capital over. Transitional justice seems reserved for situations where there are clear victors. It's interesting you didn't mention a fourth model--the US's after the Civil War or England's after the Boer War--where the victors won outright and yet made peace with the losers and effectively allowed them to take over the government within a few generations.
Thanks for reading, Naomi! Yes, those examples you mention are interesting! While writing, we left out a very brief line (and have now put it back in) about Spanish amnesty. In Spain the parliament passed a law pardoning both the opposition and Francoists; in Taiwan, it took persistent (and politically costly) efforts of a scrappy opposition to get the authoritarians-turned-political party to implement laws investigating past crimes. But I agree with you that the similarities are worth thinking through. The state apparatus remained the same in spite of voters in Spain having approved a new constitution, and similar divisive political debates regarding historical memory developed. All that said, my knowledge of Spanish transition to democracy is very, very shallow, and I'll have to read and learn more before I can even return to this topic! Thanks again for reading, and I can't wait to read Just Happy To Be Here! Am waiting for it to arrive to Taiwan =)
Quick note about how many years Taiwan has been under martial law. it's been 38 years, not 42 years as stated in this article. According to the National Human Rights Museum, martial law was promulgated in Taiwan by the Taiwan Garrison Command on May 19th, 1949 and was effective on the following day. On July 14, 1987 President Chiang Ching-Kuo declared that martial law would be lifted on July 15. Thank you for writing this. It was a very insightful piece!
A quick correction: Huang Kuo-shu, the DPP legislator who was revealed to be an informant, did not resign his position. He did resign his DPP membership but continued to serve as an independent up until two weeks ago when his term ran out. The fact that discussion over the revelation lasted barely a week or two, and was never brought up again, really shows how much the issue of transitional justice has faded from public attention these past few years.
Thank you so much for reading closely. Albert and I appreciate this correction and we'll make a note in the copy. Do you have a sense of how Taichung voters responded to the news and the extent to which it is a source of shame? We think your larger point is right—transitional justice was a hot-button issue in 2016 and even in 2020, but it seems like it's been really put on the backburner. One of our interviewees Huang Cheng-yi made a similar point, and we hope to run it soon.
Unfortunately I don't live in Taichung or have close friends there so I can't say anything about the on-the-ground reaction. The DPP did lose his seat in this election, but this is in the context of a dramatic underperformance across all of Taichung where they went from holding 6/8 seats to 2/8. (This is actually a hugely underrated storyline of the 2024 election, but it would probably take an entire blog post to discuss!)
I would say that the general consensus in Taiwanese politics-nerd discussions I've seen is that Huang would have kept the seat, or at least come much closer to keeping it, if he had run for re-election even with the scandal. Of course this is a sticky counterfactual because you could argue that a major reason why the scandal faded away so fast was because Huang immediately promised to retire from politics at the end of his term, so there was no longer any electoral value in attacking him for it.
It sounds like Taiwan essentially adopted the Spanish model! And for similar reasons. In Spain too the left essentially never had the juice, until recently, to pick fights with the right over issues of historical memory. It simply wasn't worth expending political capital over. Transitional justice seems reserved for situations where there are clear victors. It's interesting you didn't mention a fourth model--the US's after the Civil War or England's after the Boer War--where the victors won outright and yet made peace with the losers and effectively allowed them to take over the government within a few generations.
Thanks for reading, Naomi! Yes, those examples you mention are interesting! While writing, we left out a very brief line (and have now put it back in) about Spanish amnesty. In Spain the parliament passed a law pardoning both the opposition and Francoists; in Taiwan, it took persistent (and politically costly) efforts of a scrappy opposition to get the authoritarians-turned-political party to implement laws investigating past crimes. But I agree with you that the similarities are worth thinking through. The state apparatus remained the same in spite of voters in Spain having approved a new constitution, and similar divisive political debates regarding historical memory developed. All that said, my knowledge of Spanish transition to democracy is very, very shallow, and I'll have to read and learn more before I can even return to this topic! Thanks again for reading, and I can't wait to read Just Happy To Be Here! Am waiting for it to arrive to Taiwan =)
Quick note about how many years Taiwan has been under martial law. it's been 38 years, not 42 years as stated in this article. According to the National Human Rights Museum, martial law was promulgated in Taiwan by the Taiwan Garrison Command on May 19th, 1949 and was effective on the following day. On July 14, 1987 President Chiang Ching-Kuo declared that martial law would be lifted on July 15. Thank you for writing this. It was a very insightful piece!