My Fight for a New Taiwan: One Woman's Journey from Prison to Power

Epilogue

278 Epilogue As the first woman to be elected vice president of Taiwan , Lu Hsiu-lien personally participated in what many pundits saw as the final stage of Taiwan’s democratic transition. Yet euphoria over the electoral victory and the transition of power from the Nationalists to the Democratic Progressive Party government was short-lived. While forming the first non–​ Nationalist Party administration since World War II, Lu’s government was also the country’s first without a majority of seats in the national parliament. The passage of any major governmental initiatives would require compromise. To facilitate bipartisan cooperation, President Chen Shui-bian appointed a number of Nationalists to senior positions in his government . These cabinet appointments included China-born Tang Fei as the premier and head of the executive branch. A member of the Nationalist Party, Tang had served as defense minister under Lee Teng-hui and was committed to a peaceful transition under Chen Shui-bian. This unprecedented attempt to form a two-party cabinet, however, collapsed over a dispute concerning the construction of a nuclear power plant in northern Taiwan. The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant had been the subject of intense controversy since the early 1990s. During his presidential campaign , Chen Shui-bian had opposed the plant’s completion, reflecting widely held public concern over its safety. Located in a densely populated area, the power plant lies atop a fault zone and is proximate to volcanic activity in the nearby sea. Nationalist politicians had supported the plant from the outset. Reflecting the Nationalist position on nuclear energy and plagued by ill health, Premier Tang Fei clashed with Chen Shui-bian over the future of the Fourth Epilogue à 279 Nuclear Plant and resigned within five months of the presidential inauguration. In an effort to reduce tensions, President Chen Shui-bian and Nationalist Party chairman Lien Chan had coffee at the presidential palace to discuss their differences. Lien pressed Chen to support the plant’s construction; Chen remained cordial and did not commit to a course of action. The atmosphere of bipartisan civility their meeting created was punctured by new premier Chang Chun-hsiung’s announcement a few hours later that the government would halt construction on the plant. Humiliated at his loss of face, Lien Chan mended fences with his former rival James Soong. Together they called for the impeachment of both Chen Shui-bian and Lu Hsiu-lien, an act that would necessitate a new election for the head of state and give Lien Chan another chance to win the presidency. With the survival of her government threatened, Lu Hsiu-lien struggled to define her role as vice president. Unlike in the United States, where the vice president is also president of the senate, in Taiwan the vice president has no such role. The vice president is the “backup president,” serving only if the president becomes unfit to continue. No other role is clearly specified in the constitution. Vice President Lee Yuan-tsu, who had served under Lee Teng-hui, had characterized himself as a “vice president without a voice.” In addition, when a president encountered difficulties, suspicions were directed toward the vice president, who stood to benefit by ascending to the presidency if the president was forced to step down. To make matters worse, mass media portrayed Lu Hsiu-lien as the president’s “political wife” and suggested she was an “unhappy concubine in the depths of the castle” (shengong yuanfu). For Lu Hsiu-lien, these attacks revealed the almost feudal reluctance of some compatriots to accept a woman’s authority. In her first year in office, a sex scandal exacerbated Lu’s difficulties when The Journalist (Xinxinwen) magazine published a report suggesting that Lu Hsiu-lien was the source of a leak that President Chen was having an affair with his staff member Bi-khim Hsiao. Lu Hsiu-lien saw the report as simply another Nationalist attempt to 280 à Epilogue generate pressure for Chen’s impeachment. Lu had never spoken to the reporter about the alleged romance, and she sued The Journalist for libel, winning the case after a four-year legal battle. Meanwhile, the Council of Grand Justices issued a ruling on the Fourth Nuclear Plant that defused the impeachment crisis. Deciding against President Chen, the court ruled that the executive branch did not possess the authority to halt a project for which the legislature had already approved the budget. President Chen...