Two veteran Taiwanese politicians used a forum on 30 years of direct presidential elections to argue over who really holds the majority, a sign of how contested the island's split government has become.

• Former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang said Lai Ching-te would still have won the 2024 election if Taiwan used a two-round runoff system.
• His argument: the DPP is a "formal minority but real majority," since it won more district legislative votes than the KMT and TPP combined and lost seats only on election tactics.
• He said the opposition avoids a no-confidence vote against the cabinet because it knows it does not have real public backing.
• People First Party chairman James Soong shot back that he would have won in 2000 under the same runoff rules, and told the room not to relitigate the past.
• Soong pushed a broader point: Taiwan's democratic transition started before 1996, and today's deadlock needs talk and tolerance, not one side crushing the other.

Outlook: Expect the fight over the president–premier relationship and whether the opposition dares to topple the cabinet to keep driving Taiwan's political gridlock.