The Taiwanese premier resigned on Saturday following the election of independent candidate as mayor of Taipei – in a major blow to the island’s pro-China governing party.

Premier Jiang Yi-huah resigned hours after polls closed, and president Ma Ying-Jeou announced that he would reshuffle his cabinet.



Both belong to the Nationalist, or Kuomintang (KMT), party, which has long espoused deepening ties with China.

“This is a very strong message, not only to the KMT administration, but also to Beijing,” said Hsu Szu-chien, a Chinese politics expert at the Taipei-based research institution Academia Sinica.



“The Ma administration depends totally on China’s goodwill — that’s his only strategy for Taiwan’s economic development. And he’s done this by paying the price of sacrificing Taiwan’s democracy.”

Taiwan’s distrust of China “is at its highest in recent years”, he said, in the wake of Beijing’s hardline response to the pro-democracy “Umbrella Movement” that continues to paralyse swaths of Hong Kong.

Ko Wen-je, a 55 year-old emergency doctor who is backed by Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive party, will become the city’s first non-KMT mayor in 16 years. According to Taipei’s central elections commission, he took 57.1% of the vote, while KMT candidate Sean Lien, a financier and the son of a former KMT vice-president, took 40.8%.

“The walls of ideology are about to fall,” Ko said in his victory speech, according to Bloomberg. “This is the time for the people to rule.”

The relationship between the two men — Ko outspoken and unconventional, Lien more conservative and cautious — has been punctuated by dramatic twists. In November 2010, Lien was shot in the head while stumping for a KMT candidate at a Taipei rally, and Ko led a team of surgeons which helped to save his life. Ko did not conduct the surgery himself. The gunman, a gang member, is currently serving a life sentence.



Saturday’s elections were the biggest in Taiwan’s history — about 18 million people were registered to vote, and 20,000 candidates competed for an unprecedented 11,130 local seats. The KMT won in six of the island’s major cities and counties, far fewer than expected — four years ago, during the island’s last local elections, the party won 15.

The KMT’s loss of Taipei and the large central city Taicheng bode poorly for current president Ma Ying-jeou as he enters the late phase of his second and final four-year term, and for the KMT as a whole in advance of presidential elections in 2016.

Beijing has considered the island a breakaway province since a bitter civil war drove them apart more than 60 years ago. Yet cross-strait ties have improved significantly since Ma took power in 2008 — the president has signed 21 trade deals with China, the island’s largest trading partner, and expressed hopes of eventually meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Ma faces criticisms at home over his perceived coziness with mainland officials, stagnating wages, and a string of food safety scandals involving tainted cooking oil. In March, tens of thousands of protesters occupied the island’s legislature and surrounding streets to protest his handling of a cross-strait trade pact, ultimately blocking its ratification.



“I must express apologies to the Nationalist party and its supporters for making everyone disappointed,” Ma told reporters after the results were announced, according to the Associated Press. “I’ve received the message people have sent via these elections. It’s my responsibility and I will quickly offer a party reform plan to address everyone’s demands. I won’t avoid responsibility.”

Chinese state media reported on the election results while glossing over the rise in anti-mainland sentiment that they represent. “We hope compatriots across the Strait will cherish hard-won fruits of cross-strait relations, and jointly safeguard and continue to push forward peaceful development of cross-strait relations,” said Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, according to the state newswire Xinhua.



