The influence of the Taiwan Legislature — specifically of its flying fists of fury, continues to spread nearly twenty years after the the solons were awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize. Today the Khaleej Times remarks (editorially):
LIKE TERRORISM and epidemics, parliamentary pandemoniums have also conquered boundaries. Those left gasping by last week’s ruckus in India’s parliament, where a ruling party MP let fly with a pepper spray to show his disapproval of the move to split an existing state into two, now have something else to cluck their tongues over. …
It’s the spectacle that dominated the Turkish parliament Saturday when opposition MP Ali Ihsan Koturk’s patrician nose was put out of joint by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party, literally….
Around the world, there have been some intensely rocking parliamentary debates that make the Ankara or New Delhi act look like child’s play….
Taiwan merits special mention because the brawls in its legislature won it the Ig-Nobel award for peace in 1995 with the citation that it had demonstrated that “politicians gain more by punching, kicking and gouging each other than by waging war against other nations”.
This video compilation celebrates some of the Taiwan Legislature’s best fist fights: