On a bright, sunny late autumn morning on Saturday Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen joked with local media and the public as she queued at a school in Taipei to cast her vote in the country’s local elections.
By the evening, however, the outlook for Miss Tsai, her government and Taiwan’s relations with China were far from clear after the ruling Democratic Progressive party suffered a series of stunning losses to the opposition Kuomintang.
Miss Tsai, who has pursued a firmer line with Beijing than the China-friendly KMT since taking office in 2016, immediately resigned as head of the party, despite the result coming amid widespread allegations of Chinese interference in the polls.
“Today, democracy taught us a lesson,” the president said in Taipei on Saturday night.
Analysts said the local contests were fought mostly on domestic issues, including the economy and air pollution, and the result was not necessarily a rejection of Miss Tsai’s China policy — the president has sought to strengthen Taiwan’s military and build ties with western democracies in the face of Beijing’s claim that the island is part of its territory.
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But the result has raised uncertainty over Taiwan’s direction ahead of legislative and presidential elections 14 months away.
“There are big questions now about Tsai’s ability to lead the party into 2020. Her progressive agenda has stumbled, the economy is weak and China has snubbed her,” said Jonathan Sullivan, a Taiwan politics expert at the University of Nottingham.
The potential for a change of government in Taipei in 2020 will create fresh difficulties in ties between Taipei and Washington after a period of warming relations against a backdrop of Beijing’s rising aggression toward Taiwan through military, diplomatic and economic measures, experts said.
“The election results have introduced a high degree of uncertainty in cross-strait relations and the US-Taiwan security calculus,” said Elizabeth Freund Larus, a defence expert at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia.
And the return of the KMT to key mayoral seats would be viewed by Beijing that its “one China” policy “still has salience within a portion of the populace”, said Lauren Dickey, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Virginia.
Among 22 mayoral and county magistrate seats, Taiwanese voted to unseat the DPP in seven of the 13 cities and counties it held going into the election, including shock losses to the KMT in its heartland of the southern port city of Kaohsiung for the first time in 20 years and in Taichung, central Taiwan.
With New Taipei City remaining in the KMT’s grip and the capital Taipei staying with the incumbent independent and potential presidential challenger Ko Wen-je, the DPP now holds none of the top positions in Taiwan’s four largest cities.
The result marked a striking turnround from 2014 when the DPP more than doubled its tally of city leaders from six to 13, a victory that helped springboard the party to win the presidency and a majority in the legislature for the first time in its history in 2016 amid widespread angst over the KMT’s efforts to tighten ties with China.
Saturday’s polls also delivered a blow to liberal reforms. Voting on a series of referendums, Taiwanese supported restrictions on same-sex marriage and rejected a proposal for Taiwanese athletes to compete at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games under the name Taiwan, rather than Chinese Taipei.
“We are deeply saddened and disappointed by the referendum results,” said Jennifer Lu, chief co-ordinator of Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan, also noting that in 2017 Taiwan’s top court deemed as unconstitutional laws that banned same-sex marriage.
The government would now likely “drag its feet” on the introduction of laws to legalise same-sex marriage, said Timothy Rich, an Asian elections expert at Western Kentucky University.
Shen Ching-kai, a campaign leader for the Olympics name change, had hoped the referendum would be a step towards Taiwanese independence but said the government had to “fight back” against China’s “bullying”.
Others in Taiwan, however, were still celebrating their right to vote, in contrast to the lack of such freedoms in China.
“Every time I vote, I am grateful for living in a free and democratic Taiwan,” said Renee Chou, a business executive in Taipei.
