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DPP Legislator Lin Cho-shui advises Annette Lu to quit

A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator yesterday called on Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) to resign from her post and withdraw from the party if she has personal problems with the DPP and the president.

DPP Legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) said Lu was the only member of the party who had the power to sway the "red army" -- supporters of the anti-Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) campaign initiated by former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德).

Lin said it was not fair that Lu did not wield her power to influence the protesters at the Taipei Railway Station, but had instead called on the DPP to refrain from mobilizing its members to attend a rally on Ketagalan Boulevard last Saturday to counter the anti-Chen demonstration.

"If she identifies so strongly with the crowd at the station, she might want to think about whether she should continue to belong to the party," Lin said.

It was inappropriate for Lu to make comments contradicting those made by the president, Lin added.

"If she has so many problems with the president, my advice is for her to resign from the vice presidency, so that she will be free to comment without worrying about dividing the party," Lin said.

Lin, who resigned from the DPP's Policy Committee when he found that his opinions were at odds with those of the president, called on Lu to follow his example.

no sense

In response, Lu said it did not make sense to ask her to resign because she had stood firmly behind the president for years.

"Over the past six years, no one has been more supportive of the president than me," Lu said. "I do my job, I defend the president's policies -- it is my constitutional duty. I have been doing a good job, so there is no reason to ask me to resign."

Commenting on the "siege" of the Presidential Office staged by anti-Chen supporters last Friday and the pro-Chen rally organized by the Taiwan Society last Saturday, Lu said the two events "tore up the heart of Taiwan."

"In a democracy, everybody should respect each other, adopt a conciliatory attitude and learn to coexist with each other," she said. "The `siege' of Sept. 15 and rally of Sept. 16 were political activities that tore up the heart of Taiwan."

In related news, DPP Legislator Wang Tuo (王拓), in a bid to minimize the damage to the party, called on the president to voluntarily withdraw from the DPP regardless of the result of the judiciary inquiry into the alleged corruption scandals involving Chen's family and close aides.

DPP caucus whip Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津), however, said there was no way the party could distance itself itself from Chen as he had won two presidential elections on the party's nominations.

DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) said that if Chen withdrew from the party it would solve nothing, but would weaken the party's solidarity.

confident

Meanwhile, the president yesterday suggested that Shih's campaign would not succeed because "things often do not work out as planned."

Chen made the remark while receiving former Chilean defense and housing minister Jaime Ravinet de la Fuente at the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon.

Chen said that in 1998 he had sought re-election as Taipei mayor, but that things had not gone as planned and he lost the election.

"It gave me the opportunity to become the president and win re-election in 2004," he said. "Many things in our lives do not go according to plan and when someone really wants to see something happen, it often doesn't happen."
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