Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu said that members of the KMT just could never accept the fact that they lost the presidential election and therefore were trying to steal back power.
"The decision to halt the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is the right decision. It is a decision of honesty and conscience for the next generation. What is wrong with that?" Lu said during a speech to high school students yesterday morning.
Some 2000 senior high school students applauded as Lu raised her voice to severely criticize the opposition parties.
"Do the [opposition parties] intend to recall the president and myself just because the government has halted the nuclear power plant?" Lu asked.
"The motive behind this," she said, "is that they [the opposition parties] have enjoyed the privilege of manipulating power over the past 55 years and they are still unhappy about losing this privilege."
Lu, visibly angry, strongly defended President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and the DPP government, asserting that she had never given in to threats from the opposition parties.
Lu accused the KMT of attempting to pin the blame for five decades of its own mismanagement on a new government that has only been in power for five months.
"There are 6 billion people in the world but only 100 million are willing to recognize Taiwan -- that is really a shame," Lu said.
"But what I want to ask is, `how can that be the new government's fault?'" Lu said, adding, "Shouldn't [former vice president and premier] KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
Lu also said that if Lien and Soong really loved Taiwan, "how could they have ruined the country's finances and left huge mountain of debt for the new government to deal with?"
"They navigated this ship [Taiwan] into troubled waters, and now they just want to steal the helmsman's position from us," Lu said.
Lu ended her speech saying that she will safeguard justice and "not compromise."
Responding to Lu's remarks, Soong lashed out at Lu for failing to handle the government smoothly and highlighted the fact that different departments within the new government remained at odds over policy.
"Who really loves Taiwan? I remember that Lu once accused me during the presidential election campaign of `betraying Taiwan.' But now the president is going to carry out something that I campaigned for -- direct links with China," Soong said.
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