In June 1923, Li Yuanhong was expelled from beijing, and the warlord Cao Kun, who was directly related to him, reached the peak of his life, and he could no longer wait to sit on the presidency. The president is not something he can do if he wants to, he needs to go through "elections." After Li Yuanhong stepped down, a large number of parliamentarians left Beijing, making it impossible to hold normal meetings afterwards, and undermining the original election plan of the immediate family.
What to do? Cao Kun's faction hollowed out his mind and decided to complete the election by "legal means" by October 10. Cao Kun's "legal means" is "bribery." On October 5, official elections began, and the Diet was heavily guarded. At one o'clock in the afternoon, 590 members of parliament participated in the voting, and Cao Kun received 480 votes, more than three-quarters of the total vote, and was successfully elected president of the National Congress of the Republic of China.
However, after the news of Cao Kun's "bribery" spread, public opinion was in an uproar, and accusations and insults from all sides appeared endlessly. In fact, Sun Yat-sen warned long ago, "The effectiveness of the Law of the Covenants does not fall, and it enables the National Assembly to exercise its functions and powers freely, and the Congress can freely exercise its functions and powers, and sweep away all unlawful force; otherwise, the free exercise of the functions and powers of the National Assembly will not only be in vain, but also for the use of others, which will really cause chaos." ”
After Cao Kun became the president, Sun Yat-sen was very angry, on the one hand, he said that he would severely punish the parliamentarians who accepted bribes, and on the other hand, he suggested that Cao Kun be attacked. In 1924, Sun Yat-sen wrote "Crusade against Cao Kun's Bribery in Electing a President" in Guangzhou, and telephoned the diplomatic missions of various countries in China to deny Cao Kun as president.
Immediately, all kinds of ridicule appeared in an endless stream, such as Xie Bin's description in the "History of political parties in the Republic of China", "Cao Kun managed bribery for a year, exhausted the strength of the lion and the rabbit, spent up to 13.56 million yuan, and was rewarded as he wished, and he hated the members of Congress in his heart, and he had already saved the heart of the bird." ”
Cao Kun did not sit in the presidency for long, and in October 1924, Feng Yuxiang launched the "Beijing Coup", and Cao Kun was directly put under house arrest. Soon Cao Kun announced his resignation and became a commoner. Compared with the other four presidents, Cao Kun's mentality is obviously much better, which has a lot to do with the extreme poverty of his family when he was young.
Cao Kun was born in a poor family, his father was an individual who built wooden boats in a factory, he had five boys and two daughters, and Cao Kun ranked third. Due to the large number of families and the meager income, there is no food for the family to live in" In order to live, Cao Kun shared the heavy responsibility of life with his parents at the age of 7, and went to pick wild vegetables every morning, and the family barely survived.
After the "918" incident in 1931, the Japanese were not willing to occupy the three eastern provinces and tried to repeat the same trick and "use China to control China." Japanese agents made Cao Kun one of the targets of the abduction. At first, the Japanese spies failed to visit the door many times, and finally kenji Doihara, the head of the Kwantung Army's secret service, personally came to the door, but still did not return.
Kenji Toihara was not willing to accept defeat, and he instigated Gao Lingwei, the governor of the pseudo-Hebei Province, to continue to persuade him to surrender. This time Cao Kun was directly angry, "You give me to get out immediately!" When I was a traitor, I dared to climb the door of my Cao family! I don't even drink porridge and don't be a traitor! On May 17, 1938, Cao Kun died of illness at the age of 76.