On Tuesday evening, police blocked off streets in Hsinfeng Township while President Ma Ying-jeou, in his concurrent status as KMT chairman and KMT Hsinchu County commissioner candidate Chiu Ching-chun led hundreds of KMT supporters a vote-stumping parade and pushed aside a smaller group of DPP supporters including DPP former premier Frank Hsieh, who was stumping for votes with DPP Hsinchu County commissioner candidate Peng Shao-chin.

Pictures of Hsieh being squeezed by KMT backers and police and the former premier's complaint that Ma was acting as an "emperor" and KMT counter-charges of a "provocation" made late evening television news reports and headlines.

However, the most troubling aspect of the events in Hsinchu County Tuesday evening was the fact that NSB Special Service agents and military police were dressed in the campaign vests of a KMT candidate and were used to push Peng, Hsieh and DPP supporters out of the path of both Ma and Chiu.

Moreover, the attempt by the KMT camp to put blame for the disturbance on the DPP camp was punctured after television news reports showed film of dozens of young men dressed in the KMT candidate's campaign vests and sporting crew cuts deploying under the orders of NSB Major General Chi Tai-lai and thus created scenes of direct military involvement in a Taiwan election rarely seen since the martial law days of the late 1970s.

Indeed, NSB Secret Service Deputy Commander Wu Ying-ping and NSB Secret Service Tactical Section Chief Yang Hsiao-hua, while Chi said that "we did not realize" that dressing agents in KMT vests to "help them blend into the crowd" would "led to misunderstandings."

Despite Chi's protestation of innocence, it is difficult to believe that the NSB, or higher level authorities, could be unaware that this action would provoke unpleasant memories of the decades in which the three military services and security and intelligence agencies, including the Investigation Bureau and the defunct Taiwan Garrison Command as well as the NSB, were under the command of the KMT party and used to crush dissidence during the notorious "white terror."

The decision to dress NSB and military police in KMT attire threatens to reverse one of the most important and difficult achievements of the Taiwan democratization process under former president (and KMT chairman) Lee Teng-hui and ex-president Chen Shui-bian of the DPP, namely the gradual "nationalization" or de-politicalization of the armed fores and the security agencies.

The party back in command

In response to a tide of criticism, NSB Director-General Tsai Teh-sheng stated yesterday that he realized that this action was "wrong" and declared that the NSB and its agents should "not get involved in political party activities regardless of any conditions."

Moreover, the NSB issued a formal "deep apology" for this incident yesterday evening that announced that Wu had received a reprimand while Chi and Yang both received one demerit and will be transferred from their current positions and vowed to strictly demand that Special Service agents abide by the principle of administrative neutrality in the future.

While welcoming this swift response, we believe that stronger corrective action is required given the fact that it is difficult to believe that middle level NSB commanders would possess the authority to order such a dramatic reversal of the principle of administrative neutrality and order NSB Special Service agents or military police soldiers to wear KMT campaign vests and clear the streets for the KMT chairman, who bears prime responsibility for this anti-democratic outrage.

After all, this incident is but one in a long series of actions since Ma took office n May 2008 that point to the restoration of KMT party supremacy over Taiwan's hard-won democratic constitutional and legal system.

Since Ma took office in May 2008, the KMT government has moved to restore the trappings of the former dictatorship, including reversing the name change of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall from the short-lived Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall and returning statutes of the late KMT dictator in military installations, such as the Air Force Headquarters complex in Taipei City.

Even more serious is the domination of the party-to-party platform between the KMT and the People's Republic of China's ruling Chinese Communist Party in cross-strait negotiations.

Indeed, if Ma and the KMT continue to put the interests of their party above the constitutional order and are unwilling to abide by legal requirements of administrative neutrality and the fundamental democratic principle that of the political neutrality of the military and security services in local elections, citizens will increasingly be concerned whether Ma and the KMT will accept unfavorable results of national elections and leave office if defeated in future presidential or legislative polls.