Who is "Flower Mother"? I am afraid that no one in Taiwan knows about it. Because of her similar appearance to the character Hua Ma in the Japanese animation "Our Family", Chen Ju, the former mayor of Kaohsiung City, was named "Hua Ma" by netizens in Taiwan. She also has many titles: "Sister Ju", "Nan Batian", "Big Sister"... Chen Ju, who touched politics at the age of 19 after graduating from high school, has been in Taiwanese politics for half a century and is one of the most powerful people in Taiwanese politics, and the controversy surrounding her has always been continuous. Now that "Hua Mama" has been nominated as the head of the Taiwan Supervision Agency, she is suddenly ready to "cross the blue and green" and "transcend the independence" to be a "bao gong", which not only makes the outside world stunned, but also attracts a lot of scolding.
1
The rise of "Flower Mother"
At the beginning of stepping into Taiwan's political arena, Chen Ju's positioning of herself was never a "flower mother", but a sad "Taiwan chrysanthemum" and a bitter "Taiwan daughter". Born in Yilan in 1950, Chen Ju joined the political movement against the Kuomintang after graduating from high school. In 1979, Chen Ju served as the editorial board member of The Beautiful Island magazine, and on December 10 of that year, the "Formosa Boulevard" incident broke out, and the Kuomintang authorities arrested non-party people, chen Ju was one of them.
On March 18, 1980, Chen Ju was indicted for rebellion and sentenced to 12 years in prison. In 1986, after serving six years and two months in prison, Chen Ju was released from prison. In the same year, the DPP was founded, and Chen Ju immediately became one of the members of the DPP's founding ten-member group, laying the foundation for its initial position within the DPP.
Later, under the promotion of Chen Shui-bian, Xie Changting, and others in the "Beautiful Island" generation, Chen Ju successively served as the director of the Taipei Municipal Social Bureau, the director of the Kaohsiung Municipal Social Bureau, and the head of the Taiwan Labor Department. In September 2005, Chen Ju resigned due to the Kaohsiung MRT foreign labor malpractice case, and turned around and ran for mayor of Kaohsiung in 2006. In the final moments before the election, Chen Ju reversed the election situation with false accusations of bribery, and finally defeated the KMT candidate Huang Junying with a very small margin of 1114 votes and was elected. After that, Chen Ju was re-elected and served as the mayor of Kaohsiung for 12 years, known as the "Nan Batian" in Taiwan's political arena.
In Kaohsiung's three consecutive terms as mayor, Chen Ju's election votes have been higher and higher, and public support has always remained high, even the Kaohsiung petrochemical gas explosion incident that killed 32 people and injured 321 people before the 2014 election, the responsibility is directed at the Kaohsiung municipal government's weak supervision, and it has not had much impact on Chen Ju's election. On the contrary, in that year's election, Chen Ju won a total of nearly one million votes, and was re-elected with an overwhelming victory, while she received more than 65% of the votes in Lingya District and Qianzhen District, which were the hardest hit areas of the gas explosion.
Along with the smooth sailing of his career, Chen Ju's position in the DPP has risen. Chen Ju belongs to the "New Trend Department", the largest faction in the DPP, and Chen Ju has been in charge of Kaohsiung for twelve years, and her local strength is strong, which has gradually made her the "big sister" of the "New Trend Department". In May 2008, Chen Ju was elected to the Standing Committee of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and was re-elected. On February 23, 2012, when then-Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Tsai Ing-wen announced her resignation after her defeat in the 2012 taiwan leadership election, Chen Ju acted as party chairman. When Tsai Ing-wen came to power in 2016, on April 11 of that year, it was announced that Chen Ju would succeed her as secretary general of the Tsai Office. Chen Ju turned gorgeously again and became Tsai Ing-wen's "big butler", and there was no difference for a while.
From being a "little sister" outside the party to sitting firmly in the "South Hegemony" and becoming a "big sister" within the DPP, according to the words of the Taiwan media, Chen Ju "shouts water will freeze." "Taiwan News Face" guest Qiu Yi concluded that Chen Ju can have today's status, relying on four very important advantages and assets... In particular, she has the most protégé in employing people and being a person, and even the guest Cai Zhengyuan said that Chen Ju is the person with the least hostility between the DPP and the KMT.
2
"Nan Ba Tian" and Kaohsiung "Old and Poor"
In April 2018, Chen Ju left Kaohsiung and went to Taipei to be promoted to secretary general of Tsai Ing-wen's office. Unexpectedly, in the Kaohsiung mayoral election that year, Han Hanyu turned out to be a surprise, which caught the DPP and Chen Ju by surprise. Han Hanyu's remark that Kaohsiung is "old and poor" lifted the old dirt under the veil of Chen Ju's twelve years in Kaohsiung City. At the same time, Chen Ju's debt of NT$300 billion during his tenure as mayor of Kaohsiung also continued to ferment, making Chen Ju controversial. To this end, Taipei Mayor Ke Wenzhe also once slammed hard and choked Chen Ju in the air. In particular, the sentence "Frankly speaking, you are not the only one in prison, Chen Ju." It is not that the first half of his life is imprisoned, and the second half of his life can be wronged", which made Chen Ju lose face.
Criticism of Kaohsiung's failure to govern from all walks of life has made Chen Ju tired of coping, and Chen Ju's tenure as secretary general of Tsai Ing-wen's office was also in turmoil, and various negative news related to her continued to appear on the news page. On July 23, 2019, the Taiwan authorities broke out the case of cigarette smuggling by Tsai Ing-wen's secret service personnel, and although Tsai Ing-wen's office went all out to cut it, the entire case, whether it was the truck transporting bootleg cigarettes or the people involved in the so-called "group purchase", were inseparable from Chen Ju, secretary general of Tsai Ing-wen's office. On October 1, 2019, the landmark of Yilan County, Taiwan, the Nanfang'ao Cross-Sea Bridge, suddenly broke and collapsed, resulting in a tragic case of 6 deaths and 12 injuries. Lan Yingmin's careful investigation found that the three senior executives of the Taiwan Port Company surnamed Wu, Wu Mengfen, Wu Hongmou, and Wu Zongrong, not only lacked professional backgrounds, but also had one thing in common: they all came from the heads of bureaus and offices of the Kaohsiung City Government during the DPP period, and they were all Chen Ju's people. Despite the controversy, Chen Ju has always been calm and calm, but after Han Kuo-yu was elected mayor of Kaohsiung, the Kaohsiung City Council Investigation Group successively investigated the "Qingfu Case" of Taiwan's Qingfu Company, which undertook the construction of Taiwan's warships, which fraudulently borrowed more than 10 billion yuan, and the Kaohsiung Gas-Burst Charity Fund Utilization Case, and found that many suspicious points were transferred to the procuratorate, which made the DPP and Chen Ju unable to sit still. Chen Ju's people, Yin Li, a former cultural bureau chief of Kaohsiung City who claimed to be non-party and non-factional, immediately launched a "boycott of South Korea" on the Internet.
In the end, under the manipulation of the DPP, Han Hanyu was deposed by a high vote, and Kaohsiung was about to return to the embrace of the Green Camp. On the day of Han Han-yu's recall, Hsu Kun-won, the speaker of the Kaohsiung City Council, who fell to his death because of his extreme dissatisfaction and disappointment with Taiwan's politics, scolded, "Chen Ju has been in power for twelve years, and her civil servants have prosecuted a total of 105 cases and 194 lawsuits for corruption and forgery. And the Taiwan media also said that the reason why the DPP is anxious to "strike south Korea" is closely related to Han Hanyu's exposing fraud and anti-corruption in Kaohsiung. When he was in Kaohsiung City, Chen Ju called the wind and rain, and "Nan Batian" was not a fake, but after leaving Kaohsiung, Chen Ju found that Kaohsiung had been stormy and was gradually out of his control. Among them, September 2019 is a watershed. As for what malpractice case Han Hanyu found, how much lethality did it have to Chen Ju? Let Professor Qiu Yi, who was sued by Chen Ju for more than a dozen lawsuits and finally won a big victory, come and tell you.
3
"Flower Mother" as "Bao Gong"?
On the afternoon of June 22, Tsai Ing-wen's office held a press conference to announce the nomination of members of the Sixth Taiwan Supervision Agency, with a total of 27 people, of whom Chen Ju was appointed as the head of the Taiwan Supervision Agency. The press conference was originally scheduled to be held on June 19, but due to the nomination of Huang Jianting, former county magistrate of Taitung County, as deputy head of the Taiwan Supervision Agency, which caused strong dissatisfaction in the blue-green camp, the press conference was temporarily cancelled. After Huang Jianting announced his withdrawal from the nomination, Chen Shenxian, another nominee who was questioned as a member of the Taiwan Supervision Agency and former vice mayor of New Taipei City, also withdrew, making Chen Ju's nomination attract much attention. Chen Ju said that her responsibilities are heavy and must go beyond the party, and she announced her resignation from all political parties and withdrawal from the DPP.
Chen Ju said that he would withdraw from the DPP in order to transcend the party and maintain the so-called detachment neutrality, so that many political figures on the island could not listen to it. It should be known that Chen Ju not only has a strong partisan color, but also during his tenure as mayor of Kaohsiung, he was investigated by the Taiwan Supervision Agency for 58 cases, of which 30 cases were corrected and 3 cases were confirmed for impeachment. How can such a person be the head of a Taiwan supervisory organ whose important duty is to picket the malpractice of officials?
In this regard, Tsai Ing-wen, who led the personnel case of the Taiwan Supervision Agency, came forward to support it, saying that Chen Ju's experience and qualifications were enough to be qualified for the post of "president of the Supervision Yuan."
But in response to Tsai Ing-wen, there was a strong counterattack from other parties. Ko Wen-che, chairman of the Taiwan People's Party, first pointedly lamented the phrase "I am a Buddha and god bless Taiwan," and then made it clear that the Taiwan People's Party would not vote for Chen Ju as the head of Taiwan's supervisory organs; the Kuomintang's Taiwan legislature caucus began on June 28 to enter the Taiwan legislature to occupy the conference hall and protest indignantly.