While Taiwanese Vice President William Lai Ching-te secured the presidency after winning the island nation's general elections over the weekend, he would have to face not only China's constant efforts to invade Taiwan but also parliamentary drama as his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority by a single seat.
To make matters worse, the country's main supporter, the US, has been distracted by internal issues, the upcoming presidential campaign period, and the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Lev Nachman, a political scientist at Taipei's National Chengchi University, told Nikkei Asia that the following days and weeks would be crucial for Lai and the DPP as it remained to be seen whether communist China would lash out through military drills similar to the incident during former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit in 2022 or a more subtle suite of military threats and "livid rhetoric."
On the other hand, University of Oxford senior research fellow Jing Bo-jiun also stated that no party had an "outright majority at the Legislative Yuan," the island's parliament is called. This meant that the incoming Lai administration would "undergo more scrutiny and pressure from lawmakers," unlike his predecessor, outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen.
"Lai will also have to confront likely heightened voter fatigue accumulated over the party's 12 years in power by 2028," Jing added.
During the general elections held alongside the presidential polls, the main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT) won 52 seats - just one more than the DPP's 51 - and the the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) took eight, while two independent candidates were also elected.
There are fears that if the DPP could not solicit the TPP's support, the KMT - which has since embraced warmer relations with the mainland - would force Lai to either allow or veto pro-China policies.
A senior Taiwanese official added that a third DPP presidential term in such circumstances would also mean that China might only make its political intervention frequent in the days and months before Lai's inauguration on May 20.
Meanwhile, China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Chen Binhua downplayed Lai's election win, claiming that the result "cannot represent the mainstream public opinion" or the "basic landscape and development trend of cross-Strait relations."
