For those sick of the chaos resulting from the break-ups and mergers of Taiwan's political parties, things may soon get much easier. If, after Saturday's elections, all the parties, factions and independent legislators in the Legislative Yuan can end up clearly divided into two camps of relatively equal strength, political stability has a much better chance of making an appearance in the legislature. The legislature's "Warring States era" (
None of the major parties are expected to win a majority in the Legislative Yuan. The DPP and the KMT are likely to continue to be the two biggest parties and the numbers of seats that each of them hold is likely to be extremely close. Under such circumstances, the one which can form a legislative majority will get to call the shots. Therefore, those parties, factions, or independents capable of providing the badly-needed backing will end up the big winners -- by auctioning its support to the highest bidder.
The one exception is the Taiwan Solidarity Union, which doesn't appear likely to engage in such back-room deals. Although former president Lee Teng-hui (
As for the People First Party, all the signs indicate that it thinks it will reap a windfall if it plays its cards right, because it thinks the TSU won't be able to provide the DPP with sufficient backing to form a majority. What ransom could the PFP possibly demand from the KMT or the DPP? Very possibly the right to organize the Cabinet.
After all, PFP Chairman James Soong (
For this reason, the PFP scorned at the three-in-one idea proposed by the New Party candidate Yok Mu-ming (
However, things would be completely different if the DPP, TSU and other lawmakers from the so-called "localization camp" of the KMT or PFP form an alliance -- the so-called alliance for national stabilization (
Even more importantly, a DPP poll indicates that 57 percent of voters support the idea of such a pro-government alliance. It is time politicians listened to the people for a change, instead of just each other.
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS