Hu Fu, Chang Tien-chin and Constitutional Democracy

  Hu Fu, Chang Tien-chin and Constitutional Democracy

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

September 14, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The day following the passing of Academia Sinica academician Hu Fu, social media exposed that Chang Tien-chin, vice chairman of the Transformational Justice Commission, abused his authority, engaging in battling with other political party candidates. However, when we were remembering that Hu Fu devoted his whole life to the struggle for constitutionalism, the Chang Tien-chin incident, however, made people wonder whether Taiwan’s constitutionalism was moving toward failure.

The foundation of constitutionalism is political culture; first, we should start pursuing the DPP’s political culture to see whether it is a democratic political party or is merely electoral machinery that firmly grasps political power regardless of means. As vice chairman of the Transformational Justice Commission, Chang Tien-chin, however, dared to act disregarding taboos, not only totally ignoring Huang Huang-hsiung, chairman of the Commission, but also proclaimed that eight DPP legislators were his flanks; doesn’t this mean that he was supported by someone in the high echelons? What is even more unimaginable is that, with this outrageous scandal, President Tsai Ing-wen, who doubles as DPP Chairwoman, indicated very lightly, “I could not approve of such acts” through spokespersons of the Presidential Palace and the DPP. More ridiculously, the spokesperson of the Presidential Palace also said that the Transformational Justice Commission was independent and fair in nature, and that it would decide by itself how to dispose of Chang Tien-chin. It is plain that Chang Tien-chin was politically appointed, nakedly serving as a political hatchet man, and even self-proclaiming that the Transformational Justice Commission was "Dongchang” (a Ming Dynasty secret police organization equivalent to the Gestapo). This spokesperson, however, still talks about independent and fair in nature; did he consider the people as idiots?

During his lifetime, Hu Fu repeatedly expounded that the fundamental principle of constitutionalism was that the powers of the government must be restricted: The government not only should be barred from exercising the powers and the authority not specifically specified by the Constitution or law; even through the means of legislative delegation of authority, as long as the content is exceeding government powers, it is equally contravening constitutionalism, and equally violating and destroying the Constitution. The Transformational Justice Commission and the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee established by the DPP government clearly corroborated in two phenomena, contravening constitutionalism as well as violating and destroying the Constitution. Although Prof. Hu Fu has left this world, the existence of these two giant unconstitutional government agencies, however, reminded us that our constitutional democracy had yet to be a success, and that all people must courageously and resolutely defend constitutionalism.

The DPP is named after democracy and progress; with the second time in power, the phenomenon of abuse of power has been very obvious. Using the doling out of political spoils as tactics, and in the name of transformational justice, the DPP is gradually destroying Taiwan’s hard-won constitutional democracy. Following the trends and winds, the likes of Chang Tien-chin could have had the temerity of uttering such outrageous rhetoric. He was so complacent, self-admitting that the Transformational Justice Commission had been upgraded to "Dongchang”; what an apt and true to form confession.

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