The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of political interference that had allegedly resulted in the cancellation of a scheduled KMT campaign commercial on a TV network.
"Of course it is political meddling. It is another example of the Chen Shui-bian (
"It's a manifestation of the backsliding in the nation's democracy," Lien said.
The campaign commercial, which promotes Lien's presidential candidacy by portraying the DPP administration as having led the country into dire economic straits, has been shown on Tai-wanese television since the beginning of this month.
Noting that FTV had cancelled the ad on Wednesday night, although it had been scheduled to run until the end of the month, the KMT claimed the cancellation was the result of an instruction handed down by a "high-ranking official from the President's Office."
"The ad was popular and was well received in central and southern Taiwan," KMT spokesman Alex Tsai (
"In view of the DPP's declining support rate in polls in central and southern Taiwan, high-ranking officials from the President's Office probably called up FTV on Wednesday night demanding that the campaign ad be cancelled. As a result, the original airing slots on Wednesday night and on Thursday were cancelled without warning," Tsai said.
In defense of the decision, FTV officials said the ad had been dropped because the station's commercial time slots are full. They stressed that it had been purely a business decision, and said the station would make arrangements with the KMT about finding airtime to run the commercial.
Tsai said yesterday that if Chen continues to suppress the party's campaign commercial when the presidential campaign formally starts next year, the KMT-People First Party (PFP) alliance would take up the issue with the Central Election Commission (中選會) and press charges based on the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Law (總統副總統選舉罷免法).
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching