Newsmakers: Former president's aide stays true as others leave

Close aides to President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) have been deserting him in quick succession; all but one of those who served Lee when he was president have left. The sole survivor, Lee Wu-nan (李武男), has served Lee for more than 20 years.

Lee Wu-nan's relationship to the former first family is like that of Mrs Lo's (羅), who has been pushing first lady Wu Shu-chen's (吳淑珍) wheelchair for about 10 years.

"Who but Wu-nan could serve you so well?" the former first lady Tzeng Wen-hui (曾文惠) once asked her husband.

Perhaps best known among Lee Teng-hui's staffers was Su Chih-cheng (蘇志誠), once refer-red to by the media as "the top policy-making official in the Presidential Office." During Lee's 12 years in power, whatever Su said was usually taken to be what the president thought.

By contrast, there are few men quieter than Lee Wu-nan.

Long before Su rose to become the former president's closest aide, Lee Wu-nan had already become Lee's top security guard.

Lee Wu-nan was captain of Taiwan's team at the 1968 Mexico Olympic games. During the games, however, Lee, a boxer, fell in love with Tsai Chiu-hsiang (蔡秋香), a track and field athlete, and they abandoned the Games to return to Taiwan to get married.

Lee took an exam to enter the now defunct special forces police and became a bodyguard for then Taipei City mayor Chang Feng-shu (張豐緒). Tsai, meanwhile, gave up her athletic career and opened the Tien-hsing Tea House (天馨茶行), later renamed Tien-hsing Enterprise Co Ltd, in Taipei.

Lee Wu-nan served three mayors: Chang, Lin Yang-kang (林洋港) and Lee Teng-hui, the latter being greatly impressed with his performance. He served Lee throughout his vice presidency and presidency.

Dedication was one of qualities that made Lee Wu-nan the most trusted man in the entourage of a political colossus. Lee I-hsien (李宜憲), his eldest son, said the central achievement of his father's life was serving in the presidential residence. Day after day he started work at 6:30am, not returning to his "tea house" until "the boss" rested in the evening.

"He had almost no holidays for the whole year and did not spend weekends with the family. Even on Chinese New Year's Day, he had to go to the residence early in the morning because there were more visitors than usual. He came home to have Chinese New Year's dinner with us when there were fewer visitors in the evening," Lee said. "My father is just like a member of Lee Teng-hui's family."

The dedicated staffer got on particularly well with Lee Ching-long (李金龍), Lee Teng-hui's late father. Lee Ching-long liked occasionally to eat "hot pot" and enjoy a drink, and he would always invite Lee Wu-nan to join him. Even when something was on the elder Lee's mind, it was Lee Wu-nan, rather than his own son to whom he would turn.

Indeed, so trusted was Lee Wu-nan by the former president's family that he became a sort of chief of staff of the presidential residence, looking after the gardening, feeding Lee's beloved pets, maintaining the utilities and overseeing arrangements for Lee's security guards. Yet he remained "a man without a voice" during Lee Teng-hui's 12 years in power.

But the silence surrounding Lee Wu-nan has been disturbed by the Jin-Wen scandal, over which many former high-ranking officials have been indicted.

Lee Wu-nan and his family bought two houses in the villa community of Ta Hsueh Shih Hsiang (大學詩鄉), which was built by the construction company owned by Chang Wan-li (張萬利), former president of the ROC Sports Fed-eration and former head of the Jin-Wen Group.