Insults flew as the Kuomintang's headquarters was besieged yesterday by thousands of angry members seeking to force party chairman Lee Teng-hui to take responsibility for its humiliating defeat in the presidential election.
'Old Tortoise', 'Bastard', 'The man who brought ruin to the nation and the people' read some of the posters hung by protesters in front of the party headquarters, a 10-storey building near the presidential palace.
'Lee is not Mr Democracy, as people in the West call him,' said an enraged man who said he had been in the party for 33 years. 'He is Mr Dictatorship. He refuses to allow democracy within the party. He has betrayed us and the party by losing the election.' They accused Mr Lee of handing the election to Chen Shui-bian by expelling James Soong Chu-yu from the party. Mr Soong and Mr Lien split the KMT vote, allowing Mr Chen to win, although he received less than 40 per cent of the vote.
'Members of the party wanted Soong to be the candidate,' said a woman schoolteacher. 'He would have won comfortably.
'But Lee was jealous of his popularity and threw him out. Look at the result,' she complained.
The first demonstrators arrived late on Saturday after learning the extent of the defeat.