It's never a dull moment when it comes to Taiwan politics.

No, obviously not. What we saw last night was the largest

public protests in years in Taiwan, as these protesters, as you say, trying to

stop lawmakers from passing this new bill.

And the reason they're so against this new bill is that it really is a quite

remarkable expansion of the legislature's powers.

The bill would give lawmakers the ability to call the president in front

of them whenever they request. The president would also have to present

an annual state of the nation address similar to the United States.

It would also expand lawmakers abilities to investigate the government.

It would expand their powers to request documents from the government.

It would also implement fines for any government officials who are speaking to

the legislature and are found to have told untruths to lawmakers that could

result potentially in prison sentences of up to one year.

So on the executive branch, this has really been seen as a huge power grab by

the legislature and an attempt really by the legislature, which is controlled by

the more China friendly Kuomintang here as an attempt to really curtail a new

president like the just shortly after he took power on Monday.

So how much power do the people really have?

He said. If they're against this proposed

legislation, can they really block it through protests?

Well, that's what we're going to see over the coming days.

So last night the legislation passed its second reading.

It now goes into its third reading, after which it will become law on

Friday. So I think what we're going to see is

we're going to see a repeat of these protests Friday evening, potentially

even bigger. We saw about 10,000 people out on the

streets last night, according to our own estimations and local media.

And so that should repeat itself on Friday when this bill comes to passing

its final hurdle before becoming law. And this really does hearken back to ten

years ago in Taiwan, when the government at the time tried to pass a trade deal

with China and people took to the streets in huge numbers to protest

against this bill and actually managed to storm the legislature and occupy it

for several weeks and eventually forcing the government to shelve the bill.

So that was ten years ago. That was that was called the Sunflower

Movement. That was the pivotal moment in recent

Taiwanese history. And really as a as an example for these

protesters. And so you go out there and you spend

time with the protesters on the streets. They do refer back to that.

And they are saying, you know, some people are going to try to get into the

legislature, try and stop this bill, if at all possible.