The People First Party (PFP) yesterday protested against the Chinese Television System (CTS) for not broadcasting a press conference held by its presidential candidate after Friday evening’s televised campaign platform presentations.
CTS was entrusted to broadcast the televised presentations, held between 8pm and 9:40pm. It broadcast the post-presentation press conferences held by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), but not that of PFP presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜).
PFP spokesperson Wu Kun-yu (吳崑玉) said his party would formally issue a letter of complaint to CTS and the Central Election Commission (CEC) seeking an explanation.
At separate setting yesterday, commission Secretary-General Teng Tien-yu (鄧天祐) said that while the CEC is in charge of hosting the presentations, the post-presentation press conferences were matters for the presidential candidates themselves.
Meanwhile, CTS said it had a program scheduled to air at 10pm and that it would have had to report to the National Communications Commission 24 hours in advance in order to change its schedule.
Two other presentations are scheduled to take place on Friday and Jan. 6 and will be aired on the Public Television Service and China Television, respectively, while platform presentations by the vice presidential candidates will be held on Jan. 2 on Formosa TV.
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