UN Taiwan lawmakers exchange blows in bitter dispute over parliament reforms



Taiwan lawmakers exchange blows in bitter dispute over parliament reforms​

By Ben Blanchard and Fabian Hamacher
May 17, 2024 11:16 AM UTC · Updated 2 hours ago




TAIPEI, May 17 (Reuters) - 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.
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.
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.
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Lai, who is to be inaugurated on Monday, won January's election, but his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in parliament.
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.
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.
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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".



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Item 1 of 5 Taiwan lawmakers argue and exchange blows during a parliamentary session in Taipei, Taiwan May 17, 2024. REUTERS/Ann Wang
[1/5] Taiwan lawmakers argue and exchange blows during a parliamentary session in Taipei, Taiwan May 17, 2024. REUTERS/Ann Wang Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

"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.
Lawmakers from all three parties were involved in the altercations, and traded accusations about who was to blame.
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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.
"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 is a rambunctious democracy and fighting does on occasion take place in parliament. In 2020, KMT lawmakers threw pig guts onto the chamber's floor in a dispute over easing U.S. pork imports.

The clashes raise the prospect of more turmoil - and parliamentary conflict - ahead for Lai's new government after it takes office.
"I am worried," said the DPP's Wang.
 
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S.C.U.D. said:
You would NEVER see American politicians act even 1/10 as passionate as this. I fucking WISH we did this, then we'd know our politicians actually gave a shit. Bring this back:
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Politics isn't interesting when politicians aren't savagely beating each other or having pistols at dawn.
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I agree.
I will now cite a passage written by Mark Twain about his visit in the Austrian parliament:

Dr. Pattai (wildly excited). "You quiet down, or we shall turn ourselves loose! There will be a cuffing of ears!"

Prochazka (in a fury). "No – not ear-boxing, but genuine blows!"

Vielohlawek. "I would rather take my hat off to a Jew than to Wolf!"

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Strohbach (to Wolf). "Jew-flunky! Here we have been fighting the Jews for ten years, and now you are helping them to power again. How much do you get for it?"

Holansky. "What he wants is a strait-jacket!"

Wolf continues his readings. It is a market report now.

Remark flung across the House to Schönerer: "Die Grossmutter auf dem Misthaufen erzeugt worden!"

It will be judicious not to translate that. Its flavor is pretty high, in any case, but it becomes particularly gamey when you remember that the first gallery was well stocked with ladies.

Apparently it was a great hit. It fetched thunders of joyous enthusiasm out of the Christian Socialists, and in their rapture they flung biting epithets with wasteful liberality at specially detested members of the Opposition; among others, this one at Schönerer: "Bordell in der Krugerstrasse! Then they added these words, which they whooped, howled, and also even sang, in a deep-voiced chorus: "Schmul lieb' Kohn! Schmul lieb' Kohn! Schmul lieb' Kohn!" and made it splendidly audible above the banging of desk-boards and the rest of the roaring cyclone of fiendish noises. [A gallery witticism comes flitting by from mouth to mouth around the great curve: "The swan-song of Austrian representative government!" You can note its progress by the applausive smiles and nods it gets as it skims along.]

Kletzenbauer. "Holofernes, where is Judith?" [Storm of laughter.]

Gregorig (the shirt-merchant). "This Wolf-Theater is costing six thousand florins!"

Wolf (with sweetness). "Notice him, gentlemen; it is Mr. Gregorig." [Laughter.]

Vielohlawek (to Wolf). "You Judas!"

Schneider. "Brothel-Knight!"

Chorus of Voices. "East-German offal-tub!"

And so the war of epithets crashes along, with never-diminishing energy, for a couple of hours.

The ladies in the gallery were learning. That was well; for by and by ladies will form a part of the membership of all the legislatures in the world; as soon as they can prove competency they will be admitted. At present, men only are competent to legislate; therefore they look down upon women, and would feel degraded if they had to have them for colleagues in their high calling.

Wolf is yelling another market report now.

Gessman. "Shut up, infamous louse-brat!"

During a momentary lull Dr. Lueger gets a hearing for three sentences of his speech. They demand and require that the President shall suppress the four noisiest members of the Opposition.

Wolf (with a that-settles-it toss of the head). "The shifty trickster of Vienna has spoken!"

Iro belonged to Schönerer's party. The word-of-honor incident has given it a new name. Gregorig is a Christian Socialist, and hero of the post-cards and the Wimberger soda-squirting incident. He stands vast and conspicuous, and conceited and self-satisfied, and roosterish and inconsequential, at Lueger's elbow, and is proud and cocky to be in such great company. He looks very well indeed; really majestic, and aware of it. He crows out his little empty remark, now and then, and looks as pleased as if he had been delivered of the Ausgleich. Indeed, he does look notably fine. He wears almost the only dress vest on the floor: it exposes a continental spread of white shirt-front; his hands are posed at ease in the lips of his trousers pockets; his head is tilted back complacently; he is attitudinizing; he is playing to the gallery. However, they are all doing that. It is curious to see. Men who only vote, and can't make speeches, and don't know how to invent witty ejaculations, wander about the vacated parts of the floor, and stop in a good place and strike attitudes – attitudes suggestive of weighty thought, mostly and glance furtively up at the galleries to see how it works; or a couple will come together and shake hands in an artificial way, and laugh a gay manufactured laugh, and do some constrained and self-conscious attitudinizing; and they steal glances at the galleries to see if they are getting notice. It is like a scene on the stage by-play by minor actors at the back while the stars do the great work at the front. Even Count Badeni attitudinizes for a moment; strikes a reflective Napoleonic attitude of fine picturesqueness – but soon thinks better of it and desists. There are two who page 537 do not attitudinize – poor harried and insulted President Abrahamowicz, who seems wholly miserable, and can find no way to put in the dreary time but by swinging his bell and by discharging occasional remarks which nobody can hear; and a resigned and patient priest, who sits lonely in a great vacancy on Majority territory and munches an apple.

Schönerer uplifts his fog-horn of a voice and shakes the roof with an insult discharged at the Majority.

Dr. Lueger. "The Honorless Party would better keep still here!"

Gregorig (the echo, swelling out his shirt-front). "Yes, keep quiet, pimp!"

Schönerer (to Lueger). "Political mountebank!"

Prochazka (to Schönerer). "Drunken clown!"

During the final hour of the sitting many happy phrases were distributed through the proceedings. Among them were these – and they are strikingly good ones:

"Blatherskite!"

"Blackguard!"

"Scoundrel!"

"Brothel-daddy!"
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Trigger Me Timbers said:
Ahhh yes my favorite form of democracy, the “whoever has the best running back” system.
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I mean the original greco-roman style of democacry was somewhat meritocratic, only allowing on male per "tribe" to vote presentially in the capital, reasoning behind it that only people with enough wits that would be able to make the travel from whatever backwater settlement they lived to the nain city was smart enough to vote, so the Taiwanese are not that far off
 
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