Way back in December 1999, prior to the election of the first Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) government, then Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) wrote a piece in the Taipei Times arguing that direct cross-strait flights were viable and necessary. Companies from Taiwan and China could form a consortium to work a way around the diplomatic impasse, he argued.
It was strong stuff for a DPP legislator at the time, if only because it was pragmatic and realistic.
Shen was also prepared to do something that most DPP hacks would not dare: criticize former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) for her frequently absurd and embarrassing remarks, regardless of the subject.
For this willingness to speak on matters with clarity and intelligence, even when it conflicted with the ideological preferences of his party, Shen attracted a degree of support from voters who were sick and tired of partisan wrangling. His approach after that time was to forge a middle ground and from that space find new solutions.
But in early 2004, Shen began to snipe at his own party, the administration and the first family after a brief but strange disappearance, in the process alienating his colleagues and amusing his opponents — and thus securing the tag of “lone bird.”
Then his political star fell in the most humiliating manner when he failed to gain re-election to the legislature that year. For a man who apparently enjoyed so much support from a pragmatic electorate, the result showed he had lost touch with a functional political base.
It was a terrible blow: He didn’t just lose his seat — he lost his ability to speak for anyone other than himself.
Since then, Shen has been prone to erratic or self-absorbed behavior — but always self-promoting. He has spent endless hours on pro-blue-camp talkshows in an attempt to forge his beloved middle ground, trying to make sense out of cable TV drivel and in the process dignifying some of the nation’s most discredited politicians.
Shen is now back in the limelight with a failed nomination for the vice presidency of the Control Yuan. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) apparently saw in him a middle ground figure who could speak to both sides of the political spectrum, and who possibly made the symbolism of the nomination of hardline Mainlander Wang Chien-shien (王建火宣) to the Control Yuan presidency more palatable.
Shen’s latest rejection — this time at the hands of the legislature — is a sign of how Ma’s would-be agenda of inclusiveness is being disregarded by a legislature under his party’s —not his — control.
For Shen, however, the appropriate feeling is one of pity rather than indignation.
Despite his pragmatism, his sincere attempts to open a dialogue with the KMT, his appeal for inter-party consensus and, crucially, support from the president, he has failed to comprehend the politics of the day. The KMT has laughed in his face and voted him into oblivion.
Shen has been humiliated all over again — by people he had always thought could be his friends.
It is therefore time for him to do what so many promise when things go wrong in politics, yet so few achieve: retire from this seedy profession and, while there is still time, forge a new career in his twilight years that bears some semblance of dignity.
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