Furious crowds demanding Mr Lee Teng-hui step down immediately as Taiwan's Nationalist Party chairman fought riot police for a second day yesterday, and senior party politicians joined cries for him to go.
On Sunday Mr Lee agreed to step down in September, a year early, after several thousand people pelted the Nationalist headquarters building with rocks and eggs after a humiliating defeat in presidential elections on Saturday inflicted by a pro independence candidate, Mr Chen Shui-bian.
Yesterday Mr Lee told legislators who confronted him in a meeting: "Old ginger is spicier." Mr Lee (77) is blamed for allowing five decades of Nationalist rule to end because of public disgust at the government's corruption and its links to gangs.
Brandishing bamboo poles, a crowd of about 500 protesters attacked police trying to set up barbed wire barricades around the Nationalist headquarters in central Taipei.
"Lee Teng-hui is a gangster," a 51-year-old electrical engineer, Mr Paul Sheen, yelled.
Mr Lee met politicians , swept from power by public disgust at the government's corruption and its links to gangs. The Nationalists still hold a 54 per cent majority in the Legislative Yuan, but there are fears that a wave of defections could wipe that out.
Disaffected party members believe that Mr Lee, fearing that the Nationalist candidate Mr Lien Chan was unelectable, tried to steer voters towards Mr Chen.
Protesters spray-painted graffiti on the gleaming multi-storey Nationalist building. "Chairman Lee Teng-hui sold out the party and the country," read one slogan.
Mr Lee's reputation as "Mr Democracy" has been shattered in the eyes of many Nationalists. They now see him as the man who sacrificed his party to prevent his main political rival, Mr James Soong, from winning the presidency.
Mr Soong was once Mr Lee's right-hand man but he quit the party last year to run for office after the two fell out.