"Taiwan is as important to high-tech industries as the Middle East is to energy," she said.
SCANDAL
With the graft scandal spreading beyond the DPP, more than a dozen politicians are being investigated for how they used "special funds" given by the state to some 6,500 officials.
KMT Chairman and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the party's expected presidential candidate in 2008, was questioned twice last month by prosecutors over his expenditures. Ma has denied the allegations and on Nov. 24 said he would quit as KMT chairman if indicted.
Lu has also been investigated about the use of her special funds. But when asked if she would get in trouble for financial improprieties, she replied: "No, because I'm known to be not only an outspoken and honest person, I'm also clean. No one questions my cleanness."
OUTSIDER
Lu is one of the nation's most iconoclastic and toughest politicians. The 62-year-old lawyer, who earned degrees from the University of Illinois and Harvard, is a professional outsider, starting with her opposition to the authoritarian KMT government of the 1970s and 1980s.
She spent five years in jail as a political prisoner in the 1980s, survived throat cancer and an assassination attempt on the eve of her re-election as vice president in 2004.
"I am very courageous," she said. "I challenged the male chauvinist society very successfully. I survived carcinoma. At the age of 60 I was nearly assassinated. I'm prepared for whatever will happen to Taiwan and me."
RSS