Taiwanese lawmakers engaged in physical altercations in parliament on Friday amid a heated dispute over proposed parliamentary reforms, just days before President-elect Lai Ching-te takes office without a legislative majority.
The session, marked by chaos, saw lawmakers shoving, tackling, and hitting each other both outside and inside the legislative chamber. The conflict began before the voting process, with lawmakers screaming and pushing each other, and escalated as the session progressed.
In the tumultuous scenes, legislators surged around the speaker’s seat, leaping over tables and pulling colleagues to the floor. Despite a brief period of calm, more scuffles broke out in the afternoon.
Lai, set to be inaugurated on Monday, won the January election, but his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its parliamentary majority. The main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), now holds more seats than the DPP, though not enough to form a majority alone. The KMT has been collaborating with the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to advance their shared legislative agenda.
The opposition seeks to enhance parliament’s oversight powers over the government, including a controversial proposal to criminalize officials who make false statements in parliament. The DPP argues that the KMT and TPP are improperly attempting to push through these proposals without the customary consultation process, labeling it as “an unconstitutional abuse of power.”
“Why are we opposed? We want to be able to have discussions, not for there to be only one voice in the country,” DPP lawmaker Wang Mei-hui, representing Chiayi, told Reuters.
KMT’s Jessica Chen, representing the Kinmen islands near the Chinese coast, defended the reforms, stating they aim to improve legislative oversight of the executive branch. “The DPP does not want this to be passed as they have always been used to monopolising power,” she told Reuters, wearing a military-style helmet.
Taiwan’s parliament has a history of physical confrontations. In 2020, KMT lawmakers threw pig guts onto the chamber’s floor during a dispute over U.S. pork imports.
The current clashes suggest potential ongoing turmoil and parliamentary conflict for Lai’s incoming government. “I am worried,” expressed the DPP’s Wang.
