Taiwan’s 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections concluded on January 14th. Despite incumbent President Ma Ying-Jeou took 51.6 per cent of the votes and claimed his second term, the results together with the outcomes of the parliamentary elections, carried a number of implications towards the possible changes of Taiwan’s internal and external politics. More than fifty participants from the foreign communities based in Taiwan joined a forum hosted by Taiwan Thinktank, and sought to exchange timely analyses and insights.

Dr. Yung-Ming Hsu, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science from Soochow University said that given there would be four different parties to loud their separate political voices, Taiwan shall be expecting a more diversified or even fragmented parliament in the next four years. He stressed that although James Soong from People’s First Party (PFP) failed to gain satisfactory votes (2.77%) in the presidential election due to “bandwagon effect”, the PFP managed to win three seats with 5.4 per cent vote, thus, survived in the legislative election. As a result, an opposition coalition composes by the DPP, the PFP and the TSU might be established in the next sessions…