Taiwan Election Results: President Ma Wins a Second Term
January 15, 2012
Yesterday, January 14, Taiwan held its presidential and legislative elections. Incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT) won a second term in office with 51.6% of the total vote.
Attached, please find a report analyzing the election outcome. Several highlights of the analysis are included below:
With Ma remaining at the helm, Taiwan can expect another four years of steady macro-economic leadership, focused on improving national infrastructure and opening new global markets to Taiwan’s goods and services. However, we are unlikely to see any new or bold moves on the domestic front in respect to economic and regulatory reforms.
An important trend, one of the least reported upon trends presently in play in Taiwan, is the steady growth in the number of countries engaging Taiwan in bilateral trade discussions. Taiwan will likely complete its trade deal with Singapore at the end of 2012, and New Zealand, India, Japan, Australia and the EU have all signaled a willingness to engage with Taiwan in substantial trade negotiations.
The Ma government’s international trade policy seems to be working. But if he is to move Taiwan and its people to greater prosperity, President Ma will need to show considerably more courage and conviction in tackling the domestic constituencies opposing reform.
After a decade of dormancy, the U.S. Congress has returned to its leadership role in U.S.-Taiwan policy. This increased pressure from the U.S. Congress is having an impact, and was arguably the principal reason that a second significant arms package was sent by the Administration to Congress in September of 2011.
Recent positive developments are welcome. However, the question becomes which Taiwan policy the Obama Administration intends to pursue in 2012. Will it be a continuation of the past four months of activity, or now that President Ma has been re-elected will U.S. policy slip back into the morass?
While President Ma has done much to put bilateral relations on a positive path - and he has had some to work with in China who are willing to incentivize this behavior - the continued expansion of the Chinese military threat to Taiwan is deeply worrying.
In the election, the DPP gathered over 6 million votes and substantially increased their seats in the Legislative Yuan (LY). This is a reflection of the deep antipathy a large and highly active constituency of Taiwan voters has for the direction that the Ma government is taking regarding China.
Tsai Ing-wen should be heartily congratulated by her party for the remarkable job she has done rehabilitating the DPP since the poor showing in 2008 and given the many issues surrounding former DPP President Chen Shui-bian. The DPP is well positioned to continue to play an active and highly relevant role in Taiwan’s democracy over the next four years. Their opposition will curb the Ma government’s appetite for political cross-Strait concessions that may be destabilizing both domestically and for the trilateral U.S.-China-Taiwan relationship.
It is likely that bilateral and multilateral trade deals will increase in Ma’s second term. However, in the absence of a Taiwan version of “fast-track” authority, the Ma government is going to have to grapple with each deal as it passes through the LY. This is likely a prospect that President Ma’s economic team does not welcome, so I believe some effort will be made to pass legislation similar to “fast track” authority – although there is, of course, no guarantee that the LY will cooperate.
