The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday proposed that the Executive Yuan relax some of the qualification requirements for appointing new commissioners.
NCC spokesman Howard Shyr (石世豪) said that the restrictions were listed in Article 6 of the NCC Organic Law (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法), which bars potential candidates who hold a position in a political party, are participating in elections for public office or have served as a paid consultant in any state-run organization in the three years before their appointment.
Shyr said this article had prevented many qualified professionals in the telecommunications industry from being considered as commissioners because most telecommunications experts had, at some time or another, been a consultant to state-run or government organizations.
Many communications researchers have suggested the article be amended because it has limited the scope of the selection process, Shyr said.
Other government organizations that use a collegiate system similar to that used by the NCC do not apply similar restrictions, he said.
However, the Executive Yuan should keep the restriction preventing those holding a position in a political party from becoming a commissioner, he said.
The proposal, if adopted, would pave the way for more qualified personnel to be asked to join the commission, Shyr said.
It would open the door to more of the nation’s experts, such as former Chunghwa Telecom chairman Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), who currently serves as minister of transportation and communications.
“The policy would not contradict the commission’s ‘revolving-door policy,’” Shyr said. “We [the commissioners] have an agreement among ourselves that a commissioner should withdraw from a case where there may be a conflict of interest.”
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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