In August, news about the lack of support from the Presidential Office and the foreign ministry for the "2001 Global Peace Assembly"(世界和平、台灣發聲), convened by the vice president's office, surfaced on an almost daily basis. What enraged Lu was not only the lack of assistance for such a rare international event, but also the media's mounting criticism against her.
Sources from the secretary-general's office said that since Lu held the event with civic organizations, she should not have pretended to be acting in the name of the Presidential Office.
Once again, Yu was stuck in the middle.
"Without discussing the matter with the Presidential Office, staff from the vice president's office sent e-mails to invite foreign leaders [to attend the peace assembly], even those with questionable backgrounds, and arranged for banquets with President Chen and other guests," an aide from Yu's office said.
A senior member from the National Security Council said such behavior makes a laughing stock of Taiwan's national security.
In the aftermath of August's Typhoon Toraji, the media criticized the fact that the president and vice president appeared at the same affected areas in succession instead of together -- tieing up local officials with time-consuming waiting.
Newspapers later reported that this was done due to a new internal Presidential Office regulation that the two should not appear together for the sake of national security. Lu was once again furious at the press and asked the president to find out who leaked the internal regulation to the press.
It turned out that it was Tsai, one of Lu's spokeswomen, that had mentioned the regulation while briefing reporters. Lu's rage quickly dissipated.
Bad coordination within the vice president's office was demonstrated again in the latest squabble about the budget for Lu's residence. Lu said publicly that she had no knowledge of the draft budget for the renovation and furniture for her new residence, but the director of the Department of Public Affairs, Kuo Yao-chi (郭瑤琪), later displayed the official documents from Lu's office, which explicitly outlined the draft budget in dispute.
Su Ching-chiang (蘇進強), the Taiwan Solidarity Union's secretary-general and a close friend of Lu, agrees that her people are also to blame for Lu's situation.
While Lu has frequently blamed the president's "boy scouts" for obstructing the channels of communication between her and the president, she has just as often turned a deaf ear to mistakes that her own aides have made, which put her in the embarrassing position of making self-contradictory comments.
"Now that both sides have borne grudges against each other, whenever there is a dispute or misunderstanding, vice presidential aides just want to carry on the fight. But they are like firefighters who carry gasoline to fight a fire, and end up putting the vice president in an even more desperate and isolated position," said Su.
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