Taiwan’s parliament descended into a brawl on Friday just days before the inauguration of Lai Ching-te, the new president.
Politicians pushed, hit and tackled each other, clambering across tables as they swarmed around the speaker’s seat in the legislative chamber after tempers became heated in a bitter dispute about parliamentary reforms.
The argument broke out over a push by the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and its allies, to give parliament greater powers of scrutiny over the government.
This includes a controversial move to criminalise officials who are deemed to make false statements in parliament – a proposal which has been rejected by Mr Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as “an unconstitutional abuse of power”.