TAIWAN: Taiwan has chosen the Kuomintang (KMT) as the unlikely winner in the island's legislative election. The Kuomintang was the party of Sun Yat-sen, who founded the Republic of China in 1911. It fled to Taiwan after its defeat in the 1949 civil war and ruled the island with an authoritarian regime for more than 40 years.
While President Chen Shui-bian dominated his party's campaign by appealing to the Taiwanese's growing sense of their identity and celebrating the island's budding democracy, the KMT has come to represent the opposite values. Its 40-year rule in Taiwan was authoritarian and its recent approach to cross-strait relations conciliatory, a position thought to be out of favour in the island.
Another election defeat after an erosion of its support base, the loss of the presidency in 2000 and the failure to regain it earlier this year, would probably have forced the KMT to try to reform itself.
Yet since Saturday night, everything has changed. Mr Lien Chan, the party's chairman, has claimed victory for his party in Taiwan's parliamentary polls and proposed Mr Chiang Pin-kun as the new premier.
KMT officials also suggested a no-confidence motion against Mr Yu Shyi-kun, the current premier, if Mr Chen did not heed this call.
Mr Lien has evaded questions on whether he might resign and make way for Mr Ma Ying-jeou, the popular Taipei city mayor, to assume the KMT chairmanship and potentially become the party's next presidential candidate.