Newsmaker: Annie Lee keeps her father's flame alight

Annie Lee (李安妮) probably finds it ironic that two and half years after her father Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) retired from the presidency, the media is as interested in her as ever.

The 48-year-old scholar found herself in the media's spotlight again last week when she lambasted Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during a campaign appearance for DPP mayoral candidate Lee Ying-yuan (李應元).

She described Ma as a "good-looking and in-shape mayor," who has not made any improvements to the city in the past four years.

But she is not just stumping for the DPP's mayoral hopeful in Taipei. On Friday, Ms Lee left for California with Lee Ying-yuan's wife Laura Huang (黃月桂) for a three-day trip to attend rallies organized by the candidates's supporters in San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

On stage, Ms Lee is relaxed and personable, something that few people would have guessed, given her low-key attitude. Her ease on the campaign trail surprised many people when she stumped for TSU legislative candidates in last December's polls.

Many TSU officials attribute the party's good showing in those elections in part to Annie's speech at the final campaign event in Kaohsiung.

Tens of thousand of people, her parents among them, cried as she gave a moving speech about how her father had put up with defamation and personal attacks for the sake of the country.

Since then, the researcher in women's studies has become a popular speaker and a spokeswoman for her father at TSU events.

Knowing that the party can't rely solely on Lee Teng-hui, the TSU's appears to be embracing Annie as the symbol of her father's political legacy in order to consolidate its voter base.

TSU members had hoped to convince Annie to run against Ma in the Taipei mayoral race. She declined, citing a desire to remain an academic, but she remains an active figure in the party.

Not only has Annie acted as her father's alter ego at public events in Taiwan, she has traveled overseas on his behalf, given that political and diplomatic pressures still constrain the elder Lee from making many trips abroad. Last month, she went to Japan for a meeting of the World Federation of Taiwanese Associations.

In June, Annie's position as her father's political heir was further solidified when she was appointed to replace his one-time close aide Su Chih-cheng (蘇志誠) as the deputy head of the Taiwan Research Institute. Lee Teng-hui has served as the institute's honorary president after leaving office two years ago.

Ms Lee has been a promoter and defender of both her parents. She spoke out to defend her mother Tseng Wen-hui (曾文惠) in March 2000 after New Party politicians accused Tseng of trying to fly to New York with a large sum of cash following the KMT's loss in the presidential election.

She also accompanied her mother to court in March, when Tseng testified in her libel suit against the politicians she felt had slandered her two years earlier.

Born in 1954 and the youngest of the three Lee children, Ms Lee is seen as closer to her parents than either her sister Anna Lee (李安娜) or brother Lee Hsien-wen (李憲文), who died of cancer in 1982. She and her husband TTV chairman Lai Kuo-chou (賴國洲) lived with her parents after her brother died, until they moved out of the president's residence in May 2000.

The holder of a master's degree in sociology from National Taiwan University and a doctorate in social policy from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Britain, she is a research assistant at the Academic Sinica's Sun Yat-sen Institute for Social Studies and Philosophy, concentrating on social welfare policy, women and gender studies.