Eat That
Strange Facts- Eat That
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Pandemonium broke out in Taiwan's parliament Tuesday when deputies attacked a woman colleague for snatching and trying to eat a proposal on opening direct transport links with China in a bid to stop a vote on the issue.
Lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) charged toward the podium and protested noisily to prevent the review of an opposition proposal seeking an end to decades-old curbs on direct air and shipping links with China.
Amid the chaos, DPP deputy Wang Shu-hui snatched the written proposal from an opposition legislator and shoved it into her mouth, television news footage showed.
Wang later spat out the document and tore it up after opposition lawmakers failed to get her to cough it up by pulling her hair.
During the melee, another DPP woman legislator, Chuang Ho-tzu, spat at an opposition colleague.
"She spat saliva," yelled Hung Hsiu-chu of the main opposition Nationalist Party.
It was the third time filibustering by the DPP had prevented a vote on the proposed revisions.
Scuffles have been common in Taiwan's boisterous parliament since the late 1980s.
The pro-independence DPP opposes the links proposal, saying it would undermine the government's authority and the island's political status by virtually classifying flights as domestic instead of international.
Taiwan has banned direct transport links with China since their 1949 split amid a bloody civil war. Beijing still claims sovereignty over self-ruled democratic Taiwan.
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