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Voters head to polling stations in Taiwan on January 13 to elect a new president and parliament As tensions between autonomous governments rise, This relates to China, which has strengthened its military presence in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea in recent years.
Taiwanese voters will choose a new leader to succeed Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, who won elections in 2016 and 2020 and is completing her second term. Tsai is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is hated by China. Communist leaders consider Taiwan a sovereign nation, not part of China as claimed by Beijing. Due to term limits, he cannot run again.
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Voters will choose the president from among three candidates. A fourth candidate, billionaire Terry Gou, founder of Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, withdrew hours before the deadline to officially register as a candidate.
The opposition consists of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which lost the civil war and defected to Taiwan in 1949 and ruled the island with an iron fist for almost 40 years, and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), an established centrist alternative party. ing. After the leaders of both parties argued on live television, they were unable to join forces against the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and ended up running in separate presidential elections.
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After decades of martial law imposed by the KMT, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election in 1996. Since then, only candidates from the two major political parties, the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party, have won the presidential position.
Taiwan’s presidential election is determined by simple majority vote and is held every four years. There is a two-term limit for the presidency.
On Saturday, the nation will choose its president for the eighth time in a three-way race with no clear favorite.
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Approximately 20 million people in Taiwan are eligible to vote in the presidential election at approximately 18,000 polling stations. Approximately 1 million people will be eligible to vote for the first time.
The issue of identity, related to Taipei’s tense relations with China, is one of Taiwan’s most important political divides, and research shows it is closely linked to voting patterns in past elections.
China’s ruling party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), considers Taiwan part of its territory, even though it has never ruled the island. China’s Communist Party has long vowed to “reunify” the island with mainland China, by force if necessary.
Since 1992, The Election Research Center at National Chengchi University conducted a poll asking adult residents about their national identity.Over the past decade, more than half of respondents now identify only as Taiwanese.
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