The pan-blue camp and the pan-green camp yesterday bickered over the government's failure to keep its promise to withdraw its personnel and dispose of shareholdings in terrestrial TV stations by yesterday's deadline.
Pan-blue camp lawmakers, including People First Party legislators Diane Lee (李慶安) and Lee Yong-ping (李永萍), and Chinese Nationalist Party Legislators (KMT) Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛), said that it was the Government Information Office's (GIO) fault because the GIO's policy on the issue has been inconsistent.
GIO Minister Pasuya Yao (
"The regulation has been pending on the legislative floor for months. We never changed anything. The only change that we made was to suggest relocating Chinese Television System [CTS,
There is one public television station in Taiwan, Public Television Service (PTS,
The government owns 25.64 percent of TTV and 36.25 percent of CTS. The stakes in both companies long predate the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
The Broadcasting and Television Law (
The legislature, however, is deadlocked over a draft bill -- the Act to Handle Government-owned Shares of Terrestrial TV Stations (
"The act has been pending on the legislative floor since June 24, 2004. I became the minister on March 14 this year. If lawmakers were willing to help, the act should have become a law and all these problems would not exist today," Yao said.
In the meantime, the chairmen and presidents of both TTV and CTS -- all of whom were appointed by the DPP government -- offered their resignations to the Ministry of Finance, which governs the firms, on Sunday.
As of press time yesterday, Yao was still meeting with Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
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