Tough road ahead for Taiwan’s Lai with pressure from China and no majority

Taiwan's President-elect Lai Ching-te faces challenges including no parliamentary majority, opposition to trade deal with China, and military threats from Beijing.

Taiwan’s President-elect Lai Ching-te could face a tough four years in office with no parliamentary majority, an Opposition which wanted to re-start a vexed service trade deal with China and the ever present threat of military action from Beijing.

Mr. Lai, from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won on Saturday by a comfortable margin though with less than half the vote but his party lost control of Parliament on which Mr. Lai will have to rely to pass legislation and spending.

Mr. Lai takes office on May 20.

China wasted little time in pointing out that most electors voted against Mr. Lai, with its Taiwan Affairs Office saying that the DPP “cannot represent the mainstream public opinion” on Taiwan, though it did not name Mr. Lai directly unlike in the vote’s run-up when it regularly called him a dangerous separatist.

Lin Fei-fan, a former DPP deputy secretary general who is now a senior member of a party think tank, said he is “fairly worried” that the new government will have a “very tough” four years especially on China-related issues.

He said Opposition lawmakers, who together form a legislative majority, could step up exchanges with China and ask to re-start a controversial service trade pact which Taiwan shelved a decade ago in the face of mass protests.

“That’s what concerns us,” he said. “Local governments and Parliament could form a line to pressure the central government.”