National Communications Commission (NCC) nominees had a rather smooth ride when their qualifications were reviewed at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
The review session began at about 10am and ended at 1:30pm. The Joint Committee of Education, Culture and Transportation eventually passed the nominations, which will be put to a vote at the legislature on Friday.
Unlike their nine predecessors, who had to go through a 70-minute interview with a panel comprising 11 specialists representing different parties before they could even be considered, the seven nominees only faced seven minutes of questioning from each legislator.
PHOTO: CNA
Easier still, the nominees were not even required to answer questions unless the lawmakers specifically demanded it.
Though some lawmakers complained they did not have enough time to thoroughly examine each nominee, they still managed to raise some questions and put the nominees on the spot.
As expected, many lawmakers raised questions about the qualifications of nominee Liu Chorng-jian (劉崇堅).
Until last month, Liu was secretary-general of the Taiwan Telecommunication Industry Development Association (TTIDA), which was formed by the nation’s major telecom service operators.
He also represented the association in attending all the NCC hearings on draft telecommunications laws. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said that because of his connections within the telecommunications industry, Liu could become both a player and the referee once selected as an NCC commissioner.
Another lawmaker, the KMT’s Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊櫻), also asked if Liu was a “spy” sent by telecoms operators to report on the workings of the NCC.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) questioned Liu about the health risks posed by electromagnetic waves emitted by wireless base stations.
Referring to a transcript of a speech given by Liu on this topic, Chen said whatever Liu had said was meant to defend corporations.
Liu said he was not a spy and that he did not speak solely for corporations.
Rather than seeing his experience at TTIDA as a flaw, Liu said his understanding and research on the telecommunications industry would help shed new light on telecommunications policies.
KMT Legislator Kuo Su-chun (郭素春), on the other hand, asked the nominees if they harbored thoughts about becoming NCC chairperson.
The commission rules by consensus. To choose a chair, commissioners must decide among themselves who they perceive as the best person for the position.
While the renominated Hsieh Chin-nan (謝進男) and five others denied — implicitly or explicitly — they had any intention of becoming NCC chair, journalism professor Bonnie Peng (彭芸) said “she was willing to consider” the possibility.
DPP legislators Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) and Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) questioned the nominees based on the results of a questionnaire they had asked the nominees to complete.
Peng and Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) were identified as the least cooperative in the legislative review, refusing to answer as much as 70 percent of the questions on the list.
None of them wanted to comment on whether Soochow University had the right to restrict its faculty members from attending political talk shows, whether political parties, the government or the military has completely withdrawn from the media sector and whether they would investigate possible Chinese investment in the local media.
“The results showed that Peng is not qualified to be NCC chairwoman. In fact, she is not even qualified to become a NCC commissioner,” Yeh said.
KMT Legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) asked the nominees the number of hours they spend watching TV. Most said between 30 minutes and two hours, but Peng said she watched seven to eight hours of TV every day.
“It’s part of my job,” she said.
While Kuan and KMT Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) tried to raise the issue of the nominees’ party affiliations, their bark was worse than their bite.
Some potential hardball questions, such as how they stood on certain telecommunications policies, never surfaced.
Although they did not seem to know what their role would be as commissioners, some said they would be prompt in returning calls from the media.
“I know what reporters need,” professor Chi-hui Chung (鍾起惠) said. “It is the government’s obligation to communicate to the public via the media.”
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater