In the final weeks of 2024, Taiwan’s parliament once again turned into a pugilistic arena, as ruling-party lawmakers brawled with their opposition counterparts over barricades of furniture at the chamber entrances. It was at least the fourth such bust-up in 2024. Legislative brawls have a long tradition in Taiwan, but mostly they’re performative flailing. The fighting in 2024 saw lawmakers exchange punches, wrestle, throw water bottles, and even saw a male ruling-party legislator tackle and throw a female opposition counterpart to the ground.
As appalling as it was, the clashes were almost all instigated by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which still holds the presidency but is the minority in the legislature, where the opposition holds 62 out of 113 seats.
In the final weeks of 2024, Taiwan’s parliament once again turned into a pugilistic arena, as ruling-party lawmakers brawled with their opposition counterparts over barricades of furniture at the chamber entrances. It was at least the fourth such bust-up in 2024. Legislative brawls have a long tradition in Taiwan, but mostly they’re performative flailing. The fighting in 2024 saw lawmakers exchange punches, wrestle, throw water bottles, and even saw a male ruling-party legislator tackle and throw a female opposition counterpart to the ground.
As appalling as it was, the clashes were almost all instigated by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which still holds the presidency but is the minority in the legislature, where the opposition holds 62 out of 113 seats.
The ruling party’s continuous use of violence in the legislature and rallying of the public against the opposition and the legislature is undemocratic and reminiscent of heavy-handed tactics used by regimes in partly democratic states. The DPP and its supporters have tried to justify its actions by making wild claims about how the opposition is trying to create a parliamentary coup and “parliamentary dictatorship.”
In some ways, the situation resembles South Korea, where now-impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3 due in part to his irritation at the majority-controlled legislature. Incredibly, the DPP released a post on social media soon after Yoon’s martial law announcement that night implying support. It quickly withdrew that post, but not before people took note of it, which led to Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te having to reassure the public that the DPP did not support martial law.
Taiwan’s turbulent domestic politics have gone largely unnoticed despite the island sitting on a geopolitical fault line. The legislative fight on Dec. 20 occurred because the DPP was trying to prevent a vote on the third reading of several amendments that were eventually passed.
Back in May, legislative fights broke out after the DPP desperately tried to prevent a vote on amendments that would increase the power of the legislature and require the president to address the legislature, in essence seeking to both bolster the body and hold the president more accountable. They were passed by the legislature, but instead of signing them into law, Lai sent them to the Constitutional Court, which subsequently rejected most of the their powers. There have also been “smaller” fights in the legislature in the months in between, for similar reasons.
In addition, there is a pro-DPP protest movement that started in May that on Dec. 20 even tried to break into the legislature while it was in session, encouraged by several DPP legislators.
Besides legislative brawls, the government is also taking on the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), the smaller of Taiwan’s two main opposition parties, indicting its founder, Ko Wen-je, a popular former Taipei mayor, on corruption charges related to a construction project during his mayoral term as well as funding for his presidential campaign last year. In the final week of December, prosecutors demanded that he be sentenced to an astonishing 28.5 years, after having held him incommunicado since September.
Ko was granted bail by the Taipei District Court, which led prosecutors to appeal to the High Court, which asked Ko to return for another bail hearing. Ko was granted bail a second time by the district court, which again led to prosecutors arguing for him to be brought back for a third bail hearing within a week. This time, on Jan. 2, Ko was ordered to return to detention.
The DPP and its supporters claim aggressive legislative antics are necessary to prevent certain bills or amendments from being passed that might undermine national security, but this is suspiciously opportunistic. After all, each of these bills and amendments reduces the political power of the DPP, whether by increasing scrutiny of the president, expanding legislative powers, or raising the threshold for launching recalls of elected politicians in positions where the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) currently holds more offices.
That the KMT and TPP usually team up in the legislature, ensuring they can pass or vote down whatever bills they want, may be infuriating to the DPP, but that is how democracy works, specifically a divided government, which the US and even Taiwan itself has had several times. The DPP has relied heavily on the anti-China card while neglecting key problems such as energy, housing prices, and traffic deaths during the past few years, which saw it losing heavily in the November 2022 local elections.
Although the DPP lost the legislative majority in the national elections last January, the DPP’s Lai won the presidency, but only with 40 percent of the vote, despite facing two opposition candidates including Ko. It’s a situation reminiscent of South Africa, where the incumbent African National Congress (ANC) party also retained its presidency in last year’s election—but with only 40 percent of the vote. This required the party to form a coalition, but more importantly, to put aside its pride and work with the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party that has starkly different views from the ANC. Taiwan’s DPP, in contrast, has eschewed any reconciliatory or cooperative approach with the KMT and TPP.
All this bickering, whether in the political, legal, or physical arenas, is extremely worrying. It has fostered a dysfunctional political climate and escalated societal tensions, and it now threatens to undermine democracy.
For example, Taiwan’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, has had seven vacancies after seven justices finished their terms last October. However, the legislature blocked all seven of Lai’s nominees in December, so the court, which usually has 15 justices, remains only just over half full.
Meanwhile, the government insists that one of the amendments passed on Dec. 20, the proposed increase of funding for local governments at the expense of Taipei, will undermine increased defense spending that it argues is essential for preparing for a future conflict with China.
Another amendment that raises the threshold for holding recalls against elected officials has been accused by the DPP of taking away the right of the public to hold politicians to account. Yet in Taiwan, recalls have been wielded in a retaliatory and petty manner as political weapons rather than as legitimate means of kicking bad politicians out of office, and the opposition’s proposals such as requiring signatories of recall petitions to provide photocopies of their ID cards are not unreasonable.
While the latter two amendments still have to be sent to Lai to be signed, an amendment that raises the minimum quorum for Constitutional Court hearings was promulgated on Jan. 23, though not before initially being sent back to the legislature for a revote. This was rejected by the legislature, so Lai had no choice but to implement the amendment, which came into effect later that week. However, both Lai and the DPP’s legislative caucus have said they would call on the Constitutional Court to review the amendment, which means further legal wrangling.
The detention of Ko after his third bail hearing caused the TPP to hold a rally to denounce what it claims is political persecution. A massive crowd of 150,000 gathered in Taipei on a cold Saturday on Jan. 11, a resounding demonstration of mass public discontent with the DPP, especially given that the TPP is only Taiwan’s second-largest opposition party. At the rally, the TPP slammed “green authoritarianism” (green is the DPP’s color) and warned that if the DPP could use the judicial system against Ko, it could go after any other politician. KMT politicians also appeared at the rally, further solidifying the two parties’ informal alliance.
In early January, the DPP legislative caucus whip threatened that the party might seek to recall over 40 KMT and aligned independent legislators, while the KMT replied that any such attempt would be met in kind. The DPP has since initiated petitions to demand recall referendums for over 30 opposition lawmakers, with the KMT also doing the same for several DPP legislators.
Engaging in violence in the legislature to prevent bills from being passed, launching what many see as a political witch hunt against the leader of the third party, and attempting politically motivated recalls to target dozens of opposition lawmakers is a terrible look for any self-respecting democracy, much less one that is considered by some as a model in Asia. These dysfunctional domestic politics are not just embarrassing, but damaging for Taiwan’s stability.
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