The Story of Frank Hsieh (II)
After the difficult birth of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the working group (n=10) expanded into the founding committee (n=18). Chiang Ching-kuo’s policy was to deny its existence by not giving any acknowledgement but at the same time keeping a close eye on their progress. The founding committee were worried that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would strike with the most trivial excuse or at the slightest disturbance. Therefore, things were kept secret wherever possible. The decision on a date and a venue for the first party convention was made in silence by passing a piece of paper with possible dates/venues on around all the representatives for them to make a choice. They also moved swiftly, hoping that the KMT could not keep up with them. The party convention took place only two days after all the representatives were elected.
On the day of the first party conference, they held their 8th founding committee meeting at Taipei Provincial Consultative Council (now abolished) Taipei Office in the morning to convince the KMT secret police and investigators that they were still in preparation but went straight to Holiday Inn Asiaworld Taipei (now Sunworld Dynasty Hotel) for their party conference that afternoon. When booking the conference venue, they had to say it was for the Tamkaing University Alumni Association. Otherwise, not only the KMT would have found out but no one would accept their booking. They also finished electing their first party leader the same evening at Yuen Nung Tea Gallery (元穠茶藝館). Luckily, everything went according to plan.
The 1986 Parliamentary Election and the New Culture Theory
Hsieh was a Taipei City Councillor at the time. As he was drafting the party constitution and busy discussing with the subgroup the content of party constitutions and rules, he was not planning to run in the parliamentary election at the end of 1986. Chen Shui-bian, who was not part of the working group on the other hand, was. However, in May 1986, Chen Shui-bian went to prison after he was convicted of libel and refused to appeal because it was a political prosecution. So his wife, Wu Shu-jen ran instead. When there was a rumour that Wu might be rejected for health reason (she was already paralysed from her waist down at that point), Hsieh also registered as a candidate so that at least one of them could run and win. When Wu was given the green light later and they were both in the race, Hsieh made sure that Wu got elected even though he might not. He was already very popular at that time but in every public speech, he always told supporters to put Wu first by voting for her themselves and then get someone else to vote for him if they could.
It was unfortunate that another opposition figure in the same district (Kang Ning-Hsiang) suddenly appealed for support by saying that it would be ‘the last battle in his life’. A lot of supporters felt that Hsieh’s place was guaranteed because of his popularity and therefore switched their support to Kang. Hsieh immediately sensed a loss coming but was adamant not to appeal for support to avoid affecting the number of votes Wu might get. The result was that Wu got elected, Hsieh lost by only 3,000 votes and Kang won by over 70,000 votes. Many in the crowd gathering outside of Hsieh’s campaign headquarter were in tears after they saw the result and many regretted voting for Kang. Hsieh addressed the supporters there at 23:15, thanking them for their support and then went to Wu’s and Kang’s HQs to congratulate them.
Even though Hsieh did not get elected, he gained a lot of respect for being so supportive to Wu and Chen. In fact, Hsieh was also Chen’s defence lawyer in the alleged libel case. It transpired that Wu wanted Chen to appeal and urged Hsieh to persuade Chen when Chen was adamant not to. Chen got angry with Hsieh when Hsieh tried to present alternative options and Wu was not happy that Hsieh did not achieve what she wanted. The couple had really put Hsieh in a difficult position but he put up with it and supported them regardless.
From a historical perspective, one good thing that came of that campaign was the opportunity to present his New Culture Theory for Taiwan (新文化理論) to the public. The theory was based on his observation and analysis of the society such as why Taiwanese struggled to effectively tackle the injustice and social problems they faced. He also proposed solutions to the root of those problems. One of the fundamental problems was the confusion over their own identity and culture as well as the lack of trust and unity after decades of KMT indoctrination and white terror.
On 15th January 1987, a high profile public debate between him with Jaw Shao-kang about Taiwan’s future took place. While Jaw presented the unification arguments, Hsieh expressed that Taiwan’s future had to be decided by the residents of Taiwan. He believed that Taiwan should apply for UN membership as a means of unifying all Taiwanese because it would highlight to the international community that Taiwan was a sovereign country. It was also the first time he put forward the idea of building ‘Taiwan as a community sharing a common destiny (台灣命運共同體)’ as a solution. These ideas form the foundation or can be seen as the predecessors of the better known ‘mutualism’ and tested over time.
The price of protests
After the DPP was formally established, it was getting harder for the KMT to keep a tight grip. The DPP took on the role of leading movements during that time, demanding more freedom and justice. Hsieh was given the title ‘Director of Social Movements’ within the DPP and coordinated many major demonstrations during that time. This was a task other politicians in his generation would not touch with a barge pole. Chen Shui-bian and Su Tzeng-chang, for example, never participated, let alone coordinated any protest at that time. Not only was it daunting to coordinate thousands of people but most likely to be set up and portrayed as being violent or unstable by the KMT and the media.
The 612 incident during the 3 day protest (10-12 June 1987) against the National Security Act was a perfect example (KMT was going to abolish the martial law and replace it with this act. The problem was that the content of this act was almost identical to the martial law). It might have been the KMT’s attempt to damage the DPP’s reputation and destroy Hsieh’s career because when the protesters arrived at the Parliament on 12 June, the building was already surrounded by the police and members of the Anti-Communism Patriotic Alliance (反共愛國陣線) were all standing BEHIND the police, occupying areas where the government investigators were sitting the day before. All of a sudden, four men from the Anti-Communism Patriotic Alliance started provoking and hitting some of the protesters and the others in the crowd started to retaliate. It soon turned into a huge fight. The KMT also seemed to have arranged for some women and students to shout out insults to the protesters, which led some angry protesters to respond with physical force. As the leader of the protest, Hsieh tried to negotiate the then Deputy Director-General of the National Police Agency and asked him to also calm his people down but it did not work. Hsieh then had end the protest earlier than planned.
After the incident, Hsieh was immediately prosecuted and restricted exit for affray (he himself did not hit anyone) and obstructing official affairs along with two other DPP members and two from the Anti-Communism Patriotic Alliance. The media portrayed the DPP as being vulgar and violent and the reason for the protest was hardly mentioned. Hsieh initially got a three year custodial sentence. This verdict meant that he would be disbarred and not be able to run for any public office. He therefore had to appeal and enter a long legal battle.
During the proceedings, the court suddenly issued a warrant on 18th August 1987 for his arrest by 30th August. Because he attended most of the hearings and even when he could not make it, the reasons he provided were all accepted by the court, there was no ground for an arrest. It felt more and more like a set up. As the Speaker of the Council had to be informed before an arrest of any councillor was made when the Council was in session, Hsieh asked the acting speaker to tell him if he heard anything from the police. The acting speaker agreed and informed Hsieh before the police action on 29th August. When the police was waiting at the front door of his home, Hsieh slipped away through the side door and got into a taxi. He first attended a funeral where the police were watching and then got into another car to be taken to the old building of the Taiwan National University Hospital. This old building was like a huge maze with a lot of exits and was always crowded with outpatients during the day. The police soon lost him after they got into the building. Hsieh used the rest of the day to write a formal complaint and gather relevant paperwork. He turned up at the court the next day (30th August), making a formal complaint against the judge for the illegal arrest and filing a motion to recuse the judge. As a result, the hearing was adjourned.
In the spring of 1989, before the Taipei City Council went back in session, the court issued another warrant for his arrest. Hsieh had anticipated that the court might try again when the Council was not in session (he would be without protection), so he never stayed at home at night during that time. He always had dinner with his family before finding somewhere safe for the night. On 31st March 1989, he was in the sitting room after dinner when his wife took the rubbish out. His wife saw four men getting out of a taxi. They stopped her and asked her for ID. She calmly told them that she did not have it with her while trying to work out how to alert Hsieh. A neighbour saw this and called her ‘Mrs. Hsieh’, the four men surrounding her got the confirmation that she was Hsieh’s wife and immediately ran towards Hsieh’s home. She ran after them, worrying about her children and husband’s safety. When the door bell rang, Hsieh looked through the peephole and saw two men outside. He immediately grabbed a jacket and jumped out of the window in his study. The early training in gymnastics enabled him to jump from the first floor window and land on the ground safely. He then ran all the way to a main road and got into a taxi.
As no one answered the door, two men got into his home through the balcony and the other two waited by the front door. When his wife got home, the front door and the window in the sitting room were wide open. Deeply frightened, their two children ran to her, crying and trembling. She stood there, holding both children in her arms, while the four men searched their home and the surrounding area. She questioned them on what ground they broke into her home. They ignored her the whole time and only left when Hsieh rang home to say that he was in safety. Apparently, he first asked the taxi driver stop by a shoe shop before taking him to Keelung because he was still wearing indoor slippers after jumping out of the window. Hsieh chose to stay in Keelung that night because it used to rain a lot there and everyone using umbrellas, hats or raincoats would make it harder for the police to spot him. He stayed in a place owned by the police the next night because he knew that the police never raided business that belonged to one of their own.
Hsieh suspected that the KMT was trying to prevent him from running and winning in the 1989 parliamentary election. Therefore, he tried to delay the proceedings as far as possible to make sure that the matter could not be concluded before the election. To delay his receipt of the written judgement, he cancelled the registration of his law firm and made someone else the publisher for his magazine. He also moved his residence registration to Penghu and lived there for a while because the maximum time to file for an appeal after receiving a verdict/judgement for residents within the island was 10 days but 27 days for those living outside the island.
After witnessing the break-in and his escape, his chatty and lively daughter became quiet and subdued until she was in the university. His son became more clingy and insecure and it took quite a while for him to settle. In fact, his daughter was already bullied at school by children whose parents thought Hsieh was evil for representing the KMT’s ‘enemies’ (i.e. Henry Liu’s widow). They had to change her school as a result. He feels guilty about what his children had to suffer because of his work and takes his family’s privacy seriously. To date, his children have both remained low key and rarely appeared in the media or in public.
The 1989 parliamentary election and the Four Major Priorities
In December 1989, Hsieh got elected as Legislator. The court of appeal sentenced him to 4 years probation for the 612 case on 18th September 1990 and he got to keep his legal qualification. In the Judgement, the Judge mentioned ‘Hsieh Chang-ting has always endeavoured to promote democracy and political reform and has achieved a great deal to date…’ This was a huge contrast to the initial Judgement from the district court.
During the 1989 campaign, he put forward the Four Major Priorities (四大優先) for the first time. These are Taiwan, the culture, the environment and the disadvantaged/vulnerable. His work in the parliament was genuinely in line with what he proposed in the campaign. While Chen Shui-bian, who was also elected the first time as Legislator in 1989, focused on defence issues and exposing corruption within the military sector (which are most likely to attract media attention), Hsieh spent most of his time on less exciting/sensational issues such as educational reform, media reform and improving parliamentary transparency and accountability. He was one of the first to declare personal assets, campaign and office accounts for public scrutiny when pushing for Public Functionary Disclosure Act and Political Donations Act. When Chen was holding press conferences, exposing suspected corruption, Hsieh was often in his office talking with teachers about banning physical punishments or with media experts and academia about the reform of public television. He believed that education and culture were the foundation of a society. Therefore, he was willing to work on issues least likely to grab public attention and most likely to be neglected by other legislators.
Due to the differences in the issues they presented, Chen’s media time and public support seemed to be gradually surpassing Hsieh’s. No one knows whether Hsieh was bothered but his assistants were certainly worried. They often urged Hsieh to expose corruption but he rarely did. He often reminded his assistants that they could never act on any information until they found corroborating evidence because people’s lives could be seriously affected or even ruined. Many informants did not have the patience to wait for Hsieh’s office to corroborate what they provided and gave the information to other legislators who were willing to go public before checking all the facts instead. Therefore, throughout his time in the parliament as a legislator (1989 to 1996), Hsieh was never a whistle blowing ‘hero’.
After the 2008 presidential election
His political life between 1994 and 2008 was already covered in my previous post. After the 2008 presidential election, he stood down as party leader and was semi-retired for a while. He bought a house in a small village and has been learning to grow organic vegetable there. However, Ma Ying-jeou’s performance was worrying and the DPP had barely 25% of the seats in the Parliament. Hsieh therefore founded the Taiwan Shadow Government as a way of monitoring the government actions. He had become more active in public after May 2009, a year after Ma got in office, supporting DPP campaigns and various initiatives. In May 2010, he organised an ECFA referendum sit-in to highlight the impact of ECFA and the importance of having a referendum for this. The current DPP leader, Tsai Ing-wen, the former leader and premier, Yu Shyi-kun and many other prominent figures (except Su Tzeng-chang) in the green camp participated.
In 2011, Hsieh first proposes that the pro-independence and those who want to keep the status quo should join forces and fight against annexation to China. He later proposes that Taiwanese find their consensus based on the constitution. There are a lot of misunderstandings and confusions over his proposal and some people probably did not even look into it before slamming him because of the sheer mention of the ROC Constitution. I do recommend everyone looking into and thinking more deeply about this idea. He explained in greater details in his interview with Taipei Times (part I, part II). I will write about my own thoughts on this proposal after I have finished posting articles about his philosophy. One may or may not agree with his idea but what most green supporters cannot deny was his sincerity in finding a feasible plan and a practical solution for the whole Taiwan (not just for the DPP) before it achieves full independence.
Throughout his political career, he has been known as someone who is willing to negotiate and make acceptable compromises as opposed to someone who attacks and fights others head-on. For example, when he was the party whip in the parliament, he was more likely to work out what the KMT wanted, their bottom line and patiently negotiate with the KMT party whip whereas Chen Shui-bian often argued when he was the party whip. When he proposed to combine three local elections into one in 2005, the then party leader, Su Tzeng-chang seemed to be offended that Hsieh did not communicate enough with the party. At the time, they were the two most hopeful DPP presidential candidates for the 2008 election and anything between them was examined with a magnifying glass by the press. Hsieh defused this situation by immediately going to see Su in the DPP HQ and leaving the decision to the independent Central Election Commission. Many described Hsieh’s approach as the Taichi style – soft and gentle in his movement but powerful and lasting in its effect.
As a person, he is believed to be more sensitive and less self-centred than other politicians. An example of this was the way he looked after a student leader in his days. When he was in the university, he once joined a student movement. One of the leaders was a student from another university, called Hsu Hsi Tu (許席圖). Hsieh had a lot of respect for Hsu and was impressed by his confident and elegant demeanour. In 1969, at the age of 22, Hsu was arrested and convicted of treason after protesting against the KMT. Hsu was sentenced to life and had a serious mental breakdown after being severely tortured in prison. He was sent to a mental health institution as a result but the time he spent in institution did not count towards his sentence. In other words, if he ever recovered, he still had to serve the time in prison. However, his mental health is so poor that he has never come out of the institution. Hsu seems to have dementia (my guess rather than his actual diagnosis) as he does not remember anything after his arrest, does not recognise anyone and has been incontinent. When people ask him how old he is, he always says ‘22’. The torture must have been so horrifying and traumatising that his mind simply freezes at the age of 22 and blocks out anything that has happened afterwards. Hsu family stopped visiting him long time ago and he had no other important friends but Hsieh always remembered and started visiting him from the 1980s. He took the initiative to get his conviction reversed and became his legal guardian so that he could apply for compensation for the wrongful imprisonment on Hsu’s behalf in 2001. The money has been used to cover Hsu’s needs and Hsieh never benefitted financially for the work he did for Hsu. In January 2003, Hsieh went to see Hsu again, telling him in person that his name was cleared and that he would receive compensation but Hsu simply did not respond. Hsieh could not help but got in tears at that point. He got very sad when he though about what a confident and promising young leader Hsu used to be and how that bright young man’s life was completely ruined by the KMT cruelty.
There are many other anecdotes in various blogs about the bloggers’ encounters with Hsieh which indicate genuine kindness and empathy on his part. Those were clearly not work ‘commissioned’ or prompted by Hsieh or the DPP. It was refreshing to read those stories especially when one simply cannot find the same for other politicians. I don’t intend to collect or translate them all. The point is just that certain characteristics of his were actually very consistent and not ‘manufactured’ for PR. I believe that those traits would have an impact on the way he thinks and shine through his work. The purpose of mentioning them was to make it easier for readers to put his beliefs and actions in context. There are, of course, many other aspects one can write about his life but I’m going to stop here for the moment and move on to his philosophy in my next post.
Summary
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(by TWIMI http://www.twimi.net)
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References
‘A Youngster from the Blacksmith Street: The Story of Frank Hsieh (打鐵街少年: 謝長廷的故事)’ written by Kuo Chiung Li, published in 2005.
‘A Brave Figure (勇者的身影)’ written by Prof. Chang Yen-Syan (張炎憲), published in 2004.
‘Seeking Success in Adversity (逆中求勝)’ written by Kuo Chiung Li, published in 2007.
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