Taiwanese lawmakers shoved, tackled and hit each other in parliament on Friday in a bitter dispute about reforms to the chamber, just days before President-elect Lai Ching-te takes office without a legislative majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even before votes started to be cast, some lawmakers screamed at and shoved each other outside the legislative chamber, before the action moved onto the floor of parliament itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In chaotic scenes, lawmakers surged around the speaker’s seat, some leaping over tables and pulling colleagues to the floor. Though calm soon returned, there were more scuffles in the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lai, who is to be inaugurated<\/u><\/a> on Monday, won January’s election, but his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), has more seats than the DPP but not enough to form a majority on its own, so it has been working with small Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to promote their mutual ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opposition wants to give parliament greater scrutiny powers over the government, including a controversial proposal to criminalise officials who are deemed to make false statements in parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DPP says the KMT and TPP are improperly trying to force through the proposals without the customary consultation process in what the DPP calls “an unconstitutional abuse of power”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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 the southern city of Chiayi, told Reuters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lawmakers from all three parties were involved in the altercations, and traded accusations about who was to blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The KMT’s Jessica Chen, from the Taiwan-administered Kinmen islands that sit next to the Chinese coast, said the reforms were to enable better legislative oversight of the executive branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taiwan is a rambunctious democracy and fighting does on occasion take place in parliament. In 2020, KMT lawmakers threw pig guts<\/u><\/a> onto the chamber’s floor in a dispute over easing U.S. pork imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The clashes raise the prospect of more turmoil – and parliamentary conflict – ahead for Lai’s new government after it takes office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I am worried,” said the DPP’s Wang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n