First lady Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) filed a suit for defamation yesterday against the pan-blue camp's presidential candidate Lien Chan (連戰) after a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) campaign speech accused President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of taking kickbacks and being involved in corruption.

"If Mr. Lien has any evidence, show it and prove the KMT's accusations and I, as well as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), will immediately ask Chen to resign from the presidential election," Wu said during a press conference at DPP headquarters.

"In the meantime, I urge Mr. Lien to make the same promise -- that if he lacks proof he should drop out of the race himself," Wu said.

In the past couple of weeks that pan-blue camp has tried to draw fire from pressure for the KMT to give back public assets the party stole while in power, and from questions about the origin of the wealth of the Lien family.

In two generations of service as government officials, Lien's family has amassed a fortune of NT$20 billion.

The KMT has run a number of ads and held press conferences accusing the president and his wife of being involved in insider trading and receiving illegal political donations from business conglomerates by promising to return them favors via the government's policies.

On Sunday, media reported on the draft of a speech Lien was to give that day at a campaign rally. The draft accuses Chen of being a "kickback president" (抽頭總統) and taking a 10 percent skim from government construction projects.

According to the DPP's campaign headquarters, the first lady was infuriated by this accusation and she decided to personally challenge Lien.

During yesterday's press conference, an angry Wu stressed that the things about Chen of which she was proudest were his integrity and incorruptibility.

"What upset me most was that the KMT and Lien said the president took kickbacks and was corrupt without any evidence," she said.

"These groundless allegations and smears on his reputation are worse than than killing him [Chen]," Wu said.

"You [Lien] who once served as the country's vice president, how could you make those indiscriminate attacks?" she said.

After the press conference, the first lady, who has been wheelchair-bound since a KMT-organized political assassination attempt in the 1980s, went to the Taipei Distinct Prosecutors' Office in the company of some DPP heavyweights where she filed a suit against Lien for violating both the Criminal Code and the Election and Recall Law.

Asked by the media to respond to Wu's action, Lien said that he never called Chen a "kickback president" but just questioned how the first couple could double the value of its assets in the past three years.

"I have no idea about what she [Wu] means [about the `kickback president'], I did not say so personally," Lien told reporters.

"It is the entire society, the public, not only the KMT, which feels that the first couple has inappropriate connections to business syndicates," Lien said.

The KMT has claimed that during the past three years, the value of Chen's family assets has increased 125 percent, in particular the total value of the first couple's stock holdings has more than doubled to NT$74.9 million (US$2.2 million) because of insider trading.

But Wu defended her family yesterday pointing out that the KMT mistakenly added NT$48.5 million (US$1.4 million), which were government election subsidies provided under the Election and Recall Law.

"We have explained many times that the president has already donated this money for public services and to charities," Wu said.