The Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday approved a pan-blue campaign commercial accusing the CEC of being biased. The commercial survived a review of campaign material by the CEC and is slated to be aired next month.
"The content of the campaign commercials is a matter of freedom of speech. The ads are fine, as long as they do not violate Article 54 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Law (公職人員選舉罷免法) or the Radio and Television Law (廣播電視法)," CEC member Chi Jeen-nan (紀鎮南) said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) campaign advertisement in question claims that the CEC had crossed legal boundaries and that its decisions were "not neutral and were unfair." It also accuses President Chen Shui-bian (
Article 54 of the Election and Recall Law stipulates that a political party or candidate must refrain from inciting the public to "commit offenses against the internal or external security of the state" or "undermine social order by rioting."
Article 21 of the Radio and Television Law contains similar stipulations, but includes regulations against programs that "spread rumors or false information or mislead the public." Article 22 bars programs that comment on legal cases under investigation or that are sub judice. The CEC is a co-defendant in the pan-blue camp's lawsuit contesting the result of the March 20 presidential election. The lawsuit has yet to be resolved.
While it had been rumored that the ad would not be allowed as a result of its criticism of the CEC, Chi said yesterday that the review of the campaign material found it to be objective and neutral and in accordance with legal parameters.
The CEC also approved all television advertisements sent in for review by the Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan Solidarity Union, People First Party and the Nonpartisan Solidarity Union.
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
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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