The review meeting to approve the Public Television Service’s (PTS) fifth board of directors failed once again yesterday, with Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) saying the result was “sorrowful” and demonstrated that requiring three-fourths of the review committee to approve a prospective board member was an unreasonably high threshold.
Lung said the ministry had done its best to push through amendments to the Public Television Act (公共電視法), including lowering the approval threshold from three-fourths to one-half.
Only three board members and two supervisors were approved at yesterday’s review meeting, the third of its kind so far.
Photo: CNA
The three new board members are Chen Hsin-hung (陳信宏) — commonly known as Ashin (阿信), the lead singer of pop-rock band Mayday — PC Home chairman Jan Hung-tze (詹宏志) and Pegatron Corp chairman Tung Tsu-hsien (童子賢).
The two supervisors that were approved are Chou Ling-tai (周玲臺), a professor at National Chengchi University’s Department of Accounting, and Ku Ling-ling (谷玲玲), a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at National Taiwan University.
Lung said the ministry would not be able to recommend a new nominee list in the near future.
Five board members and one supervisor were approved one-and-a-half years ago, but approving only three board members and two supervisors from a list of 14 board nominees and four supervisor nominees means that PTS’s fifth board of directors still cannot be established, Lung said.
“I feel very sorry and sorrowful [about the situation],” she said.
Lung said the reason she felt sorry because PTS “is a television broadcaster that belongs to all citizens and taxpayers, but civil society is being made to tolerate a law [referring to the Public Television Act (公共電視法)] that allows a few people to paralyze the implementation of a public service.”
By contrast, the approval threshold for Council of Grand Justice members is only 50 percent, so it is unreasonable that the unpaid board of directors for the PTS needs a higher approval threshold of three-fourths, Lung said, adding that if the act is not amended, the result of the next review meeting would probably be similarly disappointing.
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