Annie Lee (
The 48-year-old scholar found herself in the media's spotlight again last week when she lambasted Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO
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 (
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 (
Ms Lee has been a promoter and defender of both her parents. She spoke out to defend her mother Tseng Wen-hui (
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 (
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.
Her colleagues say she is friendly but keeps a low profile and hardly refers to her personal life.
"Like father, like daughter," Annie believes in strong Taiwanese values. She has said that her Taiwanese consciousness first emerged when she was in the UK.
She has said that before living abroad, she had thought of herself as "Chinese or a citizen of the Republic of China."
But she said friends in the UK often asked her why she thought of herself Chinese, when she was in fact Taiwanese.
She said the question had prompted her to examine why Tai-wanese are afraid to acknowledge their own country.
The core of the issue lies in the "recognition crisis," she said. "Many mainland Chinese refuse to accept Taiwan [as home] regardless of their living here for decades."
When the transition of power took place two years ago, Annie said she thought her father could finally return to his family after fulfilling his responsibility to the country, but that political instability has made this impossible.
Annie said her father was too pre-occupied throughout his career to provide his children with guidance in person, but his words and deeds have had a great impact on them.
"Despite the calumny from opposition politicians, we have faith in our father. We believe that whatever Lee Teng-hui has done for Taiwan will be highly regarded and will be recorded in Taiwan's history," she said.
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