Shih Things

The sit-in by Shih Ming-te in front of the Presidential Palace has generated tons of publicity locally, as well as the ironic prospect of thousands of pan-Blue supporters donating money to the account of a man who has done much to end the Blue grip on the island's government. Meanwhile the political parties express various degrees of frustration and jealousy:

DPP Legislator Wang Shih-cheng (王世堅) on Thursday went as far as to say he wished Shih had been sentenced to death when he was indicted for treason 25 years ago.

"I hope Shih will put an end to such ridiculous behavior so he won't destroy his reputation," Wang said. "I wish he had been executed during Chiang Ching-kuo's (蔣經國) presidency because then he would have become a Taiwanese hero, earned the respect of the people and been well remembered."

Wrong wish, man. Say rather that you wish Shih had quietly become a revered elder statesman of the party, living off the glow from so many years of service to the cause. But instead, he has become a caricature of himself. Fortunately there are some cooler heads in the DPP:

A lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party urged party members on Thursday to react "with reason and style" in the face of a former DPP chairman's campaign to depose the embattled President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

Meanwhile the PFP and New Party Blues complained today that Mayor Ma of Taipei, who is also the Chairman of the KMT, was playing favorites when it comes to sit ins:

The Taipei City administration's decision to consider an application for the staging of a round-the-clock sit-in on Ketagalan Boulevard in a drive to unseat President Chen Shiu-bian drew heavy criticism yesterday from opposition and ruling party city councilors yesterday who claimed that the Taipei City mayor was adopting double standards.

Councilors of the New Party and People First Party criticized Taipei City Mayor and Kuomintang Chairman Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as favoring Shih Ming-te, who is leading the drive, over his own pan-blue comrades.

Pan-blue councilors, including Huang San-san, Huang You-chung and Mike Wang, contended yesterday that since the city government gave orders to disband hundreds of pan-blue supporters assembled on Ketagalan Boulevard on the night of April 10, 2004 on grounds that the protest must end before 6 p.m., the same rule should be applied to Shih.

They made the comment in the wake of PFP Chairman James Soong's (宋楚瑜) complaint on the issue Thursday when the local media reported that Ma intended to allow Shih, a former Democratic Progressive Party chairman, to stage the protest on a street that is a major artery in the city's traffic and runs in close proximity of the Presidential Office.

Mayor Ma is clearly showing a nice sense of theatre, declining to permit the Blues to embarrass themselves over the assassination attempt on President Chen by a Blue supporter two years ago, while giving Shih every chance to make the DPP look bad. Smart. Turnabout being fair play, the TSU decided to take a similar hack at Ma:

....as Clara Chou, the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union's candidate for Taipei mayor, announced yesterday that she planned to hold a 20-day rally in the square in front of the Taipei City Hall to speak on behalf of disadvantaged groups, starting August 28.

Chou said she was confident the city government would have no reason to turn down her application, in light of its decision on Shih's application.

Johnny Neihu, caustic as always, abused Shih today in a long post in the Taipei Times.

Now, a few weeks ago I cited Shih as one of Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) predecessors in the ego-trumps-patriotism stakes. But I confess that I had no idea that he was preparing his own crusade against the Apologizer-in-Chief. Prescience? Or does he read my obscure little column for inspiration? You be the judge.

Summoning the spirit of the victims of the 228 Incident (I'm not making this up), Shih carpeted Chen in an open letter, challenging him to resign for the sake of the Democratic Progressive Party and the nation, and saying that Chen has a duty to some (unnamed) ultimate arbiter of morality, rather than trifling documents such as the Constitution of the Republic of China.

Some well-meaning person once dubbed Shih Ming-teh the "Nelson Mandela of Taiwan" because of the 25 years he spent in jail for promoting Taiwanese independence. I'm not sure this is very suitable anymore. I mean, has Mandela demanded the resignation of South African President Thabo Mbeki for his and his administration's abject failures or cut deals for personal gain with his ghastly former oppressors?

And the last time I looked, Mandela was pretty much loved by his people, including many of the whites whose power he redistributed.

Shih, on the other hand, seems to be most beloved of pan-blue camp opportunists and statisticians who revel in candidate vote counts of less than 2 percent.

Not a pretty sight. I propose that Shih Ming-teh now be re-dubbed the "Shih Ming-teh of Taiwan."

Shih has apparently been cooperating with the Blues for some time, since he began to become more and more irrelevant in the late 1990s as the next generation took over the DPP and he left the DPP chairmanship. Some grandiose claims have been made for the amount of money Shih has collected from the Blues, but I suspect that what we'll see is that the money will quietly dissipate amid allegations that it had gone into pockets it shouldn't. That's usually what happens when large amounts of money are uploaded into accounts where auditing functions are weak or non-existent and one person is running the show. And Shih's money troubles have long been an issue for him.

Such political publicity stunts have long been a Shih specialty. Mark Cohen, a longtime scholar, democracy activist and indepedence supporter, reports in Taiwan at the Crossroads that in 1977, after he was released from prison in a general amnesty following Chiang Kai-shek's death, Shih ran the election campaign for Su Hong Yuah-chiao, the wife of a democracy activist who himself had been barred from running for office. Penniless after years of imprisonment and harassment by the authorities, the Sus had no funds for the campaign, so Shih had them appear in public during the campaign in their prison clothing, along with the six children, wearing signs proclaiming the parents' innocence. Su won easily.(p332). Shih also staged hunger fasts in prison that attracted worldwide attention (his brother died in 1988 after fasting in solidarity with Shih). It is wrenching to note that Cohen wrote of Shih, still in prison at the time that Taiwan at the Crossroads was written:

"Until he is released, he remains a living symbol of the KMT's suppression of popular aspirations."

As for me, I will revere the Shih that was, and mourn the Shih that is.

[Taiwan] [Linda Arrigo] [KMT] [James Soong] [Democracy] [DPP][Kaohsiung Incident] [PFP] [Shih Ming-deh/Shih Ming-te] [Chen Shui-bian]