Lawmakers press Chang over wives

Female KMT lawmakers yesterday turned up the heat on Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) over his controversial marriage to two women and questioned whether he has committed bigamy and tried to evade paying taxes.

During an afternoon interpellation on the legislature floor, two female KMT lawmakers, Chiayi-elected Huang Ming-hui (黃敏惠) and Kaohsiung-elected Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), took turns questioning Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) about Chang's controversial marriage and asked whether the premier has violated criminal law by having two wives.

"Since there was no open ceremony, [the marriage between Chang and his second wife was not recognized by the law] then bigamy was not committed," Chen answered as Chang, who was standing right next to him, looked on, embarrassed.

Visibly unimpressed with Chen's answer, Huang asked Chen whether it was permissible for other men in the country to follow his example because it does not violate the law.

Huang Chao-shun asked that Chen team up with the Cabinet to work out a plan to tackle the problem.

"It's sad to see more and more Taiwanese businessmen doing business in China with a mistress over there and a wife waiting here for them in Taiwan. Is there nothing we can do about it?" she said.

Chen said he encourages wives to take the initiative and report such situations to the police.

Without waiting for Chen to finish his remarks, Huang Chao-shun interrupted, saying, "please, sir, don't encourage men to think that it's morally acceptable [to have two wives]."

Meanwhile, KMT lawmaker Tina Pan (潘維剛) asked Chang to make public his personal assets, along with those of both his wives, in a bid to assure the public that he and his family do not intend to evade paying any taxes.

Since National Women's Day on March 8, female lawmakers have launched a barrage of attacks against Chang's controversial marriage status.

They especially targeted Chang's failure to call the quarterly meeting of the Cabinet's Commission for the Promotion of Women's Rights (婦女權益促進委員會).

Chang, on the other hand, blamed the omission on the lack of a budget, and said that the vice premier has been elected by the commission's board to call the meeting.

That Chang has two wives is not a secret. In 1994, when Chang was running for the mayoral election in Kaohsiung, his rivals used the issue to attack him during the campaign.

Chang later made his second wife, Chu A-ying (朱阿英), make a public apology to the electorate and had her cut her hair to denote the sincerity of her apology.

The unconventional move, however, did not win him the election and received much criticism.

In an exclusive interview on Thursday with a Chinese-language newspaper, Chang's first wife, Hsu Jui-ying (徐瑞英), talked to the paper for the first time about her 40-year marriage to the premier.

Hsu, a devout Christian living in Kaohsiung, said that she does not hate her husband anymore but prays for him everyday.

"What do you expect me to do when he likes it the way it is?" she said.

"He has indirectly said sorry to me through his friends. I'm grateful that he didn't want to divorce me. I don't want to divorce him, either ... It's embarrassing to fight with his second wife. I may put him in a bad light."

Chang met Chu while taking dancing lessons. Hsu was pregnant with their third child at that time.