Disagreement over the government's "UN for Taiwan" initiative was the major roadblock during yesterday's legislative review of next year's budget for the Government Information Office (GIO).
The GIO said it needed funds to promote the nation's overall image, but opposition legislators accused it of working only for the interests of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
"The GIO has no right to collect money from each Cabinet department to set up a fund to promote the nation in general. Each agency is responsible for doing their own promotion work and the GIO does not have the authority to take over that responsibility," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Kuo Su-chun (
She was referring to the NT$140 million (US$4.3 million) the GIO has spent on its UN bid.
Pan-blue lawmakers have repeatedly accused the GIO over the past few weeks of "demanding" that all Cabinet-level departments foot part of the bill for the "UN for Taiwan" campaign.
GIO Minister Shieh Jey-wey (
"The GIO never asked the departments to give us a single penny for the initiative," Shieh said yesterday.
KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (
"Over the past few years, the government has spent hundreds of millions on advertisements promoting Taiwan. But the results have been very poor. Taiwan continues to be isolated from the UN and the WHO. Even the US, our best non-ally, is reluctant to pay attention to us and Taiwan-EU relations have grown cold," she said.
Other pan-blue legislators also said they would oppose the budget because they are afraid the GIO will use the money to campaign rather than utilizing it for the year's projects.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS