Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent proposals concerning a possible cross-strait peace accord and his suggestion that such an accord should be put to a public referendum have opened up one of the most central issues in the presidential election campaign — the question of how we define ourselves as a nation.

The pan-blue and pan-green camps hitherto packaged their positions on this issue using various slogans, such as Ma’s “three noes” (no unification, no independence and no use of force) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) “Taiwan consensus.”

In a recent publication of the Corruption Index of Countries, it was noted that Taiwan had not made any gains in its anti-corruption efforts. This was true despite the fact that Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou touted the fact that his anti-corruption campaign would be one of the main thrusts of his first four years. For those who watch Taiwan closely and have seen the failings of the courts under Ma, and the double standard in the application of justice, this has come as no surprise.

One of the problems that Taiwan has faced as it emerged from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) one-party state, the White Terror, and martial law is the fact that the country had never achieved transitional justice.