｜ II. Conflicts Behind the Concerted Efforts of the Ruling and Opposition Parties As part of President Lee Teng-hui's efforts to take a local reform approach, native-born KMT legislators formed the political sub-group Brainstorming Breakfast Assembly under the Legislative Yuan. The subgroup would become a rival force against the New Kuomintang Alliance that was formed within the party later on. Photographer: Hsu Po-hsin There are two sections in Article 100 of the Criminal Code: 1. Any person committing an act with intent to destroy the organization of the State, seize State territory, or, using illegal means, change the Constitution or overthrow the Government shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not less than seven years; the ringleader shall be sentenced to life imprisonment. 2. Any person preparing or conspiring to commit the offense specified in the preceding paragraph shall be sentenced to imprisonment not less than six months but not more than five years. Abolishing or amending Article 100 of the Criminal Code would mean not only overcoming the obstacle that was the Ten Thousand Year Congress but also the battling factions within the KMT. The former was 130 a matter of time. As for the latter, it was hard to tell which side would prevail. According to the Legislative Yuan Bulletin, Liang Su-yung once stressed that, “After abolishing the Betrayers Punishment Act, the KMT must stick to the bottom line that Article 100 of the Criminal Code must not be abolished. Otherwise, the country will be overrun with pro-independence sentiments, putting a question mark over political stability. On top of everything else, how the CCP views the situation is another problem.” Liang Su-yung’s tough stance not only represented the thoughts of the senior legislators but also the deep anxiety of conservative forces in the KMT. Chapter 4 ｜ Law Amendments: No More Political Prisoners A President in a Precarious Situation— Lee Teng-hui’s Attempt to Consolidate the Pro-Localization Faction of the KMT On January 13, 1988, President Chiang Ching-kuo passed away. Vice President Lee Teng-hui was sworn into office, ending the era of strongman politics. But was Lee Teng-hui an actual successor or just the head of state during a transitional period? The question was still up in the air. Then KMT supplementary legislator Huang Chuwen recalled that, after Chiang Ching-kuo passed away, Chiang Soong May-ling returned to Taiwan from the US and published the article “Old Tree, New Branch”. It is clear that the KMT, which focused on constitutional and legal authority, viewed Lee Tenghui as not having the right pedigree. To them, Lee Teng-hui was just another “Yan Chia-kan”, just another successor in form only. From then on, Lee Teng-hui—who called for local reforms—and the conservative forces engaged in power struggles that evolved into infighting between the “mainstream faction” and the “non-mainstream faction”. Supplementary legislator Huang Chu-wen, who was elected in 1983 and subsequently re-elected, said that Chiang Ching-kuo never met with supplementary legislators when he was President. They were completely disregarded. To his surprise, two weeks after Chiang Ching-kuo’s death, he received a call from the Office of the President inviting him and Wu Hsin, a fellow supplementary legislator, to meet with Lee Teng-hui at the Presidential Office Building to discuss some matters. When they met, Lee Teng-hui straightforwardly asked Huang and Wu what they thought about his situation. According to Article 49 of the Constitution, they answered, there was no question about his succession to the presidency. However, the KMT was a Lenin-style autocratic party that ruled through the September 6, 2021: Huang Chu-wen recalling the negotiating process for amending Article 100 of the Criminal Code. Photographer: Huang Yen-wen party. Lee Teng-hui controlled neither the party, government, and military, nor intelligence agencies. None of the five powers in the five-power Constitution was under his control. In other words, he was little more than a titular head. The three men agreed that the pro-localization faction must establish their own forces within the Legislative Yuan. Lee Teng-hui told Huang and Wu to gather all native-born legislators and establish a political sub-group in the Legislative Yuan to push for local reforms. On April 22, 1988, the Legislative Yuan’s political sub-group Brainstorming Breakfast Assembly was officially established. The group held a breakfast meeting each day, with the purpose of “consolidating the leadership, stabilizing the political situation, and promoting constitutional reform”. The group started out with 21 legislators and eventually expanded to over 40 people. Soon after its founding, the Brainstorming Breakfast Assembly formed the Three-One Club with DPP legislator Kang Ning-hsiang and others to cooperate on matters of constitutional reform, such as ending the indefinite terms of senior legislators and a full National Assembly re-election. “Three-One” refers to how supplementary legislators were re-elected “once every three years”. The name clearly distanced them from the senior legislators that 131