Chen Under Pressure

In his 2004 inaugural address, Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian pledged "to unify the people of Taiwan." It worked: Taiwan's people are now uniting against him. Amid allegations of insider trading and influence peddling involving senior aides, his son-in-law and the First Lady, Chen's public-approval rating has plunged below 20%. Faced with the threat of revolt from his own supporters, Chen last week beat a strategic retreat, announcing he would hand over day-to-day running of the government to Premier Su Tseng-chang. "He knows he's in political trouble," says Emile Sheng, a political-science professor at Soochow University in Taipei. "He's trying to do everything he can to remain in office."

That, too, is working—so far. By forming an alliance with Su, Chen's withdrawal from domestic politics stabilized support from his own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), says Sheng. And while opposition Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers are demanding a recall of Chen, the party doesn't have enough support in Taiwan's parliament to secure the two-thirds vote necessary to push through a recall motion. That could change if Chen or his wife become directly linked to illegal activities, notes Sheng, which might cause a critical mass of DPP members to join calls for his ouster. "The DPP can tolerate poor government performance, but it can't tolerate corruption within the First Family," says Hei-yuan Chiu, a sociologist at Academia Sinica, a state-funded research institute.

At a rally in Taipei on Saturday, KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou, an early favorite in the 2008 presidential race, joined calls for Chen to step down—adding to the already considerable pressure on the President. If Chen does stay in office for the two years remaining in his term, he seems destined to be a lame duck. "I don't think there's any way the President can come back and gain substantial control of country," Sheng says. "He has already lost his mandate."

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