The dispute over Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) residence not only highlights the lack of communication between her and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), but also shows the ongoing struggle between her office and that of the secretary-general to the president, Yu Shyi-kun.
From The Journalist's (新新聞) scandalous story that Lu was trying to overthrow the president by spreading rumors of infidelity, her recent hosting of the World Peace Assembly in August to the most recent dispute over housing, relations between Lu's office and other departments of the Presidential Office have long been strained.
Lu's spokeswoman, Tsai Ming-hwa (蔡明華) has said on several occasions that the president's young aides, the so-called "boy scouts," should take most of the responsibility for driving the president and his deputy apart.
"These people discredit Lu purposely and obstruct communication between the president and vice president," Tsai has said.
Yu Shyi-kun has become a major target of criticism, Presidential Office sources say. He, as the "grand chief for internal affairs of the Presidential Office," is stuck with being in between the Chen and Lu -- and maintaining a unified, coordinated operation of the Presidential Office.
He has to "avoid the release of conflicting orders and opinions from the Presidential Office," the source said.
"Faced with a willful and individualistic vice president, disagreements based on perceptual differences became a natural occurrence" between the vice president and the secretary-general.
"And disagreements over trivial matters at the administrative level have accumulated into vicious infighting within the Presidential Office," a close aide to the president pointed out.
The grudges between Yu and Lu are two-fold. One is the restriction over holding press conferences and the issuing of press releases. The other is a source from within the Presidential Office, who regularly leaks negative information about Lu to the press.
For example, the harsh media criticism Lu received when she insisted on dining with her lawyers at the Taipei Guest House last year occurred after just such a leak from inside the Presidential Office.
Lu was dining with her lawyers in preparation for a court hearing against The Journalist magazine.
But her use of the guest house for personal affairs forced a pre-arranged dinner party for foreign guests, hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to move from the Taipei Guest House to the Lai Lai Sheraton Hotel.
Lu later lashed out at poor communication within the Presidential Office for making her take the flak without informing her of the situation in advance.
Presidential aides were also disturbed after a press release issued by Lu's office raised her battle with The Journalist to one between the Presidential Office and the magazine at a time when the president was faced with opposition moves to impeach him.
Yu then came forward and declared during internal meetings that all statements from the Presidential Office should go through the Department of Public Affairs and that press releases should not be issued without Yu's review and approval.
To clarify The Journalist magazine's accusation, Lu expressed her wishes to the president, seeking his support. But Lu was rebuffed, as the president's aides wanted him to stay away from the lawsuit for his own protection. During this period, reports about poor communication between Chen and Lu abounded, and most of them portrayed Lu in a negative light.
In August, news about the lack of support from the Presidential Office and the foreign ministry for the "2001 Global Peace Assembly"(世界和平、台灣發聲), convened by the vice president's office, surfaced on an almost daily basis. What enraged Lu was not only the lack of assistance for such a rare international event, but also the media's mounting criticism against her.
Sources from the secretary-general's office said that since Lu held the event with civic organizations, she should not have pretended to be acting in the name of the Presidential Office.
Once again, Yu was stuck in the middle.
"Without discussing the matter with the Presidential Office, staff from the vice president's office sent e-mails to invite foreign leaders [to attend the peace assembly], even those with questionable backgrounds, and arranged for banquets with President Chen and other guests," an aide from Yu's office said.
A senior member from the National Security Council said such behavior makes a laughing stock of Taiwan's national security.
In the aftermath of August's Typhoon Toraji, the media criticized the fact that the president and vice president appeared at the same affected areas in succession instead of together -- tieing up local officials with time-consuming waiting.
Newspapers later reported that this was done due to a new internal Presidential Office regulation that the two should not appear together for the sake of national security. Lu was once again furious at the press and asked the president to find out who leaked the internal regulation to the press.
It turned out that it was Tsai, one of Lu's spokeswomen, that had mentioned the regulation while briefing reporters. Lu's rage quickly dissipated.
Bad coordination within the vice president's office was demonstrated again in the latest squabble about the budget for Lu's residence. Lu said publicly that she had no knowledge of the draft budget for the renovation and furniture for her new residence, but the director of the Department of Public Affairs, Kuo Yao-chi (郭瑤琪), later displayed the official documents from Lu's office, which explicitly outlined the draft budget in dispute.
Su Ching-chiang (蘇進強), the Taiwan Solidarity Union's secretary-general and a close friend of Lu, agrees that her people are also to blame for Lu's situation.
While Lu has frequently blamed the president's "boy scouts" for obstructing the channels of communication between her and the president, she has just as often turned a deaf ear to mistakes that her own aides have made, which put her in the embarrassing position of making self-contradictory comments.
"Now that both sides have borne grudges against each other, whenever there is a dispute or misunderstanding, vice presidential aides just want to carry on the fight. But they are like firefighters who carry gasoline to fight a fire, and end up putting the vice president in an even more desperate and isolated position," said Su.
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