Cross-party talks to discuss the government's budget scheduled for yesterday afternoon were canceled because of a pan-blue-camp boycott, upset over the continued delay by the government in the establishment of the National Communications Commission (NCC).
"The administration's recent moves are clearly a political scheme staged at thwarting the establishment of the NCC so the Government Information Office (GIO) can continue to suppress media groups it deems unfriendly to the government, including TVBS," People First Party (PFP) caucus whip Hwang Yih-jiau (
Hwang said that the pan-blue parties do not rule out the possibility of adopting more dramatic measures in future in retaliation for what he called the administration's manipulation of the media and obstruction of the setup of the NCC.
The pan-blue alliance had threatened to indefinitely boycott the negotiations for the government's budget if the Executive Yuan fails to send the list of nominees for the National Communications Commission (NCC) to the legislature for confirmation.
While the Executive Yuan was supposed to send the list of nominees recommended by the review panel on Sunday (Dec. 18), as of yesterday it had not yet done so.
The Executive Yuan said it would like the panel to select another candidate to replace Lu Chung-chin (
Lu, a professor from National Tsinghua University in Hsinchu, withdrew his name two days after he was recommended by the panel.
Under the Organic Law of the National Communications Commission (
Claiming that the NCC law encroaches on the government's executive power, the Executive Yuan has said that it would seek a constitutional interpretation from the Council of Grand Justices on the legislation.
Hwang yesterday called on the Executive Yuan to immediately send the 12 recommended nominees to the legislature for confirmation because the law does not authorize the Executive Yuan to ask the review committee to fill the vacancy. Besides, the panel was dissolved after the screening was completed, he said.
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:
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