TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Legislative Yuan announced a break until Thursday morning after a member of staff was taken to hospital Wednesday evening as a voting session about budgets for state corporations entered its 27th hour.
After a marathon session Monday which culminated in the approval of guidelines on ill-gotten party assets, the opposition Kuomintang was seen as striking back by filing more than 1,600 items and amendments to the 2016 budgets for the state-run enterprises.
As a result, the Legislative Yuan decided to hold a non-stop day-and-night voting session from Tuesday evening until the end of Friday.
A woman whose job it was to read out the text of legislative proposals during the session was found unconscious in the Legislative Yuan restrooms Wednesday evening before 6 p.m., reports said.
Her husband and other relatives were alerted, and she had been transferred to a nearby hospital by ambulance, said legislative secretary-general Lin Chih-chia.
Since all party caucuses had agreed to hold the non-stop session, staff could only do their job, fight exhaustion and continue working, Lin said, adding that he hoped there could be talks to change the way of dealing with the budget votes.
Shortly later, Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan announced lawmakers could leave from 8 p.m, with the session not resuming until Thursday morning. During the next day, caucuses could hold negotiations to decide how to continue, reports said.
Earlier statements by lawmakers said they might need 15 to 30 days if they had to vote on all of more than 2,400 amendments from all parties.
A legislator from the ruling camp had said they would vote until members of staff dropped, which is what seemed to have happened 27 hours into the voting.
During the day, legislators were seen sleeping, reading or drinking coffee, while some pushed the voting buttons of absent or sleeping colleagues. More than 600 votes had taken place by 5 p.m. Wednesday, media reports said.