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Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen announced she would resign Saturday as party leader after a big defeat in local government elections, according to state media. Tsai, the country's first woman president, resigned as chairwoman of the ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party Saturday, but she will serve out the rest of her term as president.
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The next election is set for January 2020.
The opposition party, Kuomintang (KMT), won 16 of 22 cities and counties government elections across the nation, the Central News Agency reported, signaling dissatisfaction with her leadership.
The DPP used to control 13 cities and counties and four of Taiwan's special municipalities prior to Saturday's poll, but now only controls six cities and counties.
Tsai took responsibility for the dissatisfaction at a media briefing where she announced her resignation.
"I hereby announce my resignation as chairwoman and shoulder responsibility," she said. "We have learned a lesson and must reflect on ourselves as, obviously, voters have a higher expectation of us."
The poll results could also cost Tsai the 2020 election since she might not even be nominated to run, analysts said.
"The results indicate the public are strongly dissatisfied with the performance of Tsai and used their ballots to teach her a lesson," said Wang Kung-yi, a political-science professor at Chinese Culture University in Taipei.
The Republic of China remains the official name of Taiwan, which is 112 miles off the southeastern coast of mainland China, because of the One China policy and the People's Republic of China's insistence that Taiwan is a renegade province temporarily separated as a result of the Civil War.
Bejing has staged war games around the island of Taiwan and poached five of its diplomatic allies.
DPP supporters have been disappointed with Tsai's soft stance on the cross-strait policy and unwillingness to change the name of the island to Taiwan, South China Morning Post reported.
