A routine budget review session held by the legislature's Education and Culture Committee yesterday turned into a verbal battle when several pan-blue legislators blasted Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) over a string of issues unrelated to the agency's budget for next year.
Instead of discussing the budget, several pan-blue legislators, including the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) and Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), took turns berating Shieh for reportedly forcing several government agencies to cough up money to fund the administration's recent NT$150 million (US$4.6 million) "UN for Taiwan" initiative.
Shieh denied the allegations, saying he would swear on his life that the GIO did not receive "a single penny" from other agencies for the project and vowed to resign if it was proven otherwise.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
He argued that the sum received for the UN initiative was part of the general funds routinely collected from different agencies to promote governmental policies.
The lawmakers also lambasted Shieh for taking out a full-page advertisement under the name of the GIO in a pan-green newspaper yesterday, criticizing a pan-blue newspaper, China Times, and KMT vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) for "brown-nosing China and sabotaging Taiwan" during his recent visit to the US.
"The individual named in the ad embarrassed and humiliated the country when he said Taiwan was viewed as a troublemaker by many countries and not just China," Shieh said, adding that the intent of the ad was to shed light on false reporting by the China Times in its recent "Taiwan 2008" series.
The opposition party lawmakers also attacked Shieh for defending Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (
Shieh told reporters that Tu's nose-picking was done in protest at the pan-blue lawmakers' behavior during Tuesday's session.
Lee fired back and said that if picking one's nose is a form of protest, then all anti-unification activists should hold a group nose-picking session to demonstrate their disdain for China.
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