Ma's action and his declaration that he will continue to visit Cixi annually on the anniversary of Chiang's death on April 5, 1975 are unmistakable signals that the president elect intends to resurrect the former virtual state religion of the Chiang personality cult that is enshrined in the Cixi facility and the even more imposing imperial temple, once known as the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, in the middle of Taipei City as well as streets and facilities all over Taiwan.

Ma stated that the judgment of history on Chiang and the autocratic rule of his son Ching-kuo, who is interred at Touliao in Taoyuan County, is "open to discussion" and maintained that his visits to the mausoleums were "individual actions" and should not be branded as an acts of "worship."

Ma thereby willfully ignores the fact that the very existence of these publicly-funded shrines marks nothing less than a campaign by the KMT to use state power to "coerce" all of the 23 million Taiwan people into "adhering" to its own Chiang cult.

Chiang's personality cult, which was launched by the KMT regime on the China mainland during its "New Life Movement" in the 1930s and imposed on Taiwan in the late 1940s, is thought by some to rival the cult of the German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler as well as the quasi worship of the Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong in the People's Republic of China after 1949.

All citizens, especially members of the KMT party, government, military, secret police and intelligence and security forces, were required to first "forever support the Leader" and, after his death in April 1975, "forever cherish the Leader," while the educational system was used to propagate Chiang's feudal-dictatorial values of obedience to patriarchal authority and Chinese national chauvinism.

Instead of upholding democratic values and truly acting as a "president of all the people," Ma's actions have elevated the deceased "Leader" and his cult to a place above the citizenship and human rights of the Taiwan people, including the right of citizens not to finance the KMT party religion.

Murderer worship

The continued use of public land, resources and taxpayer funds to promote the Chiang cult is no less offensive to millions of Taiwan citizens, especially victims or relatives of victims of the February 28th Massacre of 1947 and the KMT's "white terror," than the Yasukuni Shrine is to millions of people in East and Southeast Asia, including Japan itself, precisely because it commemorates a murderer.

There is no better word to describe Chiang's actions.

Chiang clearly bears political responsibility for the February 28th Massacre of 1947 as he was the head of the KMT state who ordered the dispatch of troops to put down a civilian uprising against KMT occupation, but there is room for debate on the degree of his direct responsibility for the deaths of over 10,000 Taiwanese during that repression.

However, there is a mountain of documentary evidence for Chiang's personal responsibility for issuing direct orders in his own hand for the state murders of thousands of Taiwan citizens during the "white terror" of the 1950s through 1970s.

Chiang regularly changed "light" sentences given by KMT martial law kangaroo courts of five, 10 years or life or even innocent verdicts for "sedition" into death sentences on his direct written order.

Moreover, Chiang's standing orders that he be shown "before" and grisly "after" photographs of the executed Taiwan citizens was scarcely less perverse than the ritual beheading of Chinese citizens by Japanese officers in mainland China in the 1930s.

Ma's claim that he is acting in his "individual" capacity is a sham that scarcely covers a troubling double-standard.

After all, Ma and his party have vocally criticized Japanese prime ministers and even former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui for their "personal" visits to the Yasukuni Shinto Shrine in Tokyo which houses memorial tablets to Japanese soldiers who died in the war campaigns of the former Japanese Empire, including 14 war criminals.

In the long-run, the most damaging impact of Ma's affirmation of Chiang's "Leader" cult on both our citizens and foreign visitors (including tourists from the PRC) will be the sanitization of the KMT's authoritarian record and past history of state terror during both its three decades of attempted dictatorship on the China mainland and its nearly 55 years of autocracy and one-party domination on Taiwan.

For our part, we will do our best to ensure that the 23 million people of Taiwan do not forget the true history of the Chiang dictatorship and to remind Ma of his responsibilities to uphold the values of Taiwan's democracy instead of affirming the worst aspects of the KMT legacy.