President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) son and daughter-in-law will return home to have their first baby, a Presidential Office spokesman said yesterday.
"The couple have never said that they would not have their baby here at home," Director of the Presidential Office's Secretariat Department Lin Te-hsun (
When he was in Palau in September, Chen went on record as saying that his daughter-in-law, Huang Jui-ching (
Lin said yesterday the couple had been under a tremendous amount of pressure because certain media outlets had tried to make an issue out of the birth of their child.
These media outlets had tried to link the fate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in next month's Taipei and Kaohsiung mayoral elections to the birth of the couple's child, he said. The misinformation campaign was an attempt to take the public's focus away from the controversy surrounding Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (
Lin, however, declined to say exactly when the couple would return to Taiwan, saying that the timing was unimportant.
"What really matters is that they will return to have their baby," he said.
The wrangling over dual nationality of members of politicians' families started back in 2000 when Chen attacked People First Party Chairman James Soong (
Chen had said the Taiwanese did not want "a father of an American" to be a president.
In related news, DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (
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