Two senior lawmakers from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party announced their resignations from parliament on Monday to protest against alleged corruption by Chen Shui-bian, the island’s embattled president.

The dramatic move by Lin Cho-shui and Lee Weng-zhong is the first open sign of an internal party power struggle triggered by the public prosecutors’ move 10 days ago to indict Mr Chen’s wife on corruption charges and to declare the president a joint suspect.