Taiwanese Parliament turns into a battlefield
Images of the Legislative Yuan, the Taiwanese Parliament, made the rounds on social networks on Friday May 17. Parliament Speaker and member of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, Han Kuo-yu, was forced to suspend the session after a fight broke out between MPs. The debates around a project to reform the legislative body, carried by the opposition parties, led to chaotic scenes.
In the crowd, Kuo Guowen, MP and member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), even snatched the ballot papers from the hands of the Secretary General of Parliament, Zhou Wanlai. “He ran to the exit,” reports the local media site Cti News, which headlines “Kuo Guowen turns into a thief”.
The opposition groups – the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) – denounced the “violence” by Kuo Guowen, saying that this kind of incident had never happened in Parliament. The PDP denounces “the undemocratic procedure, the unconstitutional content, the brutal and savage methods” of his adversaries. He accuses them of wanting to modify the content of the agenda without prior consultation. “(They) shame Taiwanese democracy,” accuses a member of the PDP, reports the Taiwanese news agency Central News Agency.
The two opposition parties in fact tried to force the adoption of this new law by relying on their majority in Parliament, just before the inauguration of the new president, Lai Ching-te, scheduled for May 20. This bill, categorically rejected by the PDP, aims to extend the power of Parliament, by strengthening its control over the executive (investigations, hearings, etc.), creating the crime of contempt of Parliament and specifying that the president must appear before him every year to report on the state of the nation.
With a minority in the Legislative Yuan, the PDP fears facing, for the next four years, an alliance of the two opposition parties. Ker Chien-ming, chairman of the PDP parliamentary group, warns that, “Without procedural justice, the Taiwanese Parliament will be transformed into a Chinese National People’s Congress, or that of Hong Kong”, reports the island’s media Oline newspaper.
