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City approves ad controls

The Taipei City Government approved a draft to regulate campaign advertisements yesterday in an effort to ensure public safety and traffic order in the upcoming elections.

The decree will go to the city council for notification and is expected to officially go into effect on Sept. 1.

The city is also scheduled to announce further details on where and how many campaign advertisements are to be allowed on Sept. 1.

Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), the director of the city's information department, said after the weekly closed-door city affairs meeting that the decree, which is the first of its kind among local governments, is important in the run up to the year-end legislative, county commissioner and city mayoral elections.

"To ensure the neatness of the streetscape, public safety and traffic order, the city has pioneered efforts to adopt measures that effectively regulate campaign advertisements anticipated in the upcoming elections," he said.

Under the new rules, any campaign advertisement intended to be erected on public properties such as roundabouts, parks, overpasses, traffic islands and bridges would be regulated.

Campaign advertisement is defined as any form of advertisement bearing three of the following: the candidate's name, image, ballot number, campaign slogan, or the name, time or location of the candidate's campaign activity.

Those candidates who wish to put up any campaign advertisement on public properties are required to first obtain permission from the city.

Advertisement signs, banners, or posters will be disallowed one month before the day of the borough warden election or primaries, and two months before the election day in other kinds of races.

In addition, they would be allowed only within 50m of the campaign activity.

Candidates would be required to clean up campaign advertisements set up on public property one day after the election or the date specified on the permission document.

Those who fail to file for an admission or fail to clean up the advertisements within the time required would face having the objects immediately dismantled by the city government. The city would also reveal the name of the violator on the Internet or other media.

Lin Cheng-hsiou (林正修), director of the city's Bureau of Civil Affairs (民政局), said that the city is serious about getting tough on violators.

"To ensure election fairness and to avoid the unnecessary waste of social resources, we are serious when it comes to implementing the law," he said.
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