Family believes legislator spellbound

With gossip-tongues still wagging over the alleged affair between DPP legislator Cheng Yu-chen (鄭余鎮) and his aide Wang Hsiao-chang (王筱蟬), the lawmaker's relatives are charging that Wang charmed Cheng with witchcraft to steal him from his wife.

According to local reports yesterday, Cheng's family suspects that Wang has a hold on Cheng, otherwise Cheng, quoting family members, "would not have been placed under house arrest" by Wang.

Cheng's family raised the suspicion in light of his strange behavior over the past three months, during which he has alienated his family and clung tightly to Wang, according to local media.

The reports quoted the family members, without naming names, as saying that Wang had followed Cheng very closely -- even when Cheng was going to the toilet -- while they were working in the legislature.

When Wang saw Cheng use a phone, the reports said, she would snatch the phone away and ask the person on the other side of the phone "who is speaking?"

The report further cited an unnamed local politician in Hsinchuang, Taipei County, near Cheng's family home, as saying that relatives had sought the assistance of deities and fortune-tellers to solve the puzzle and were told that Cheng was spellbound by some kind of Toaist charm named "witch blood."

This charm is reportedly a very powerful resort that can be used by women to control their men.

Cheng Hung-ni (鄭紅霓), the lawmaker's younger sister, would not confirm or deny the reports when contacted by the Taipei Times yesterday.

She said she and her family need to take "one more day" to ponder the question and would make a public explanation after they have figured it out.

"The whole chain of events is beyond reason. My brother wasn't this kind of person," she said.

The rumored affair between Cheng and Wang surfaced months ago when Cheng hired Wang as his office's chief convener.

In what marked a culmination of the story, Cheng's wife, Lu Pei-ying (呂珮茵), unexpectedly volunteered to act as a legislative assistant in her husband's office last week -- while the two were on a trip to China.

The move was considered an effort to assert her status as a wife.

Although the two returned to Taiwan last Thursday, Cheng refused to see his wife and stayed in Wang's apartment. He also issued a statement Thursday, saying that he regretted the extensive media coverage of his alleged affair.

The pair left Taipei for southern Taiwan last Friday.