The legislature has passed amendments that abolish provisions allowing Public Television Service (PTS) board members to remain in office after their terms expire.
The amendments cleared the Legislative Yuan yesterday in a 59-49 vote, with lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) using their numerical advantage to delete the so-called “indefinite extension” clause from the Public Television Act (公共電視法).
Under the previous law, board members whose terms had ended could continue serving until new appointees formally took office, a mechanism critics said enabled prolonged extensions and weakened governance.
Photo: Chung Chih-kai, Taipei Times
The current PTS board’s term expired in May last year, but a new board has yet to be fully reconstituted, as nominations have not completed the statutory review process.
KMT Legislator Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) and the TPP caucus proposed the amendments, arguing that the extension clause distorted governance and undermined the network’s professionalism and independence.
Although cross-party negotiations on the bill concluded on Tuesday, the dispute over the extension clause was left unresolved and sent to the full chamber for a vote.
During the floor debate, TPP Legislator Liu Shu-bin (劉書彬) said abolishing the rule would prevent “perpetual board members” and help safeguard the broadcaster’s independence.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) criticized the move, saying that the amendments could paralyze board operations by deterring qualified candidates because they might not want to go through the partisan wrangling that would inevitably result to fill the PTS board.
Under the law, the PTS board consists of 11 to 15 directors and three to five supervisors, all of whom must be approved by a review committee composed proportionally of party representatives, with a two-thirds majority required.
The Ministry of Culture announced 14 director and five supervisor nominees on Dec. 17 last year, but only four director candidates were approved at the first review meeting on Dec. 31.
Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠) said the stalemate amounts to political interference in the media, which he described as regrettable.
Li said he would study whether any remedial measures are available or seek an interpretation from the Ministry of Justice.
PTS is Taiwan’s sole publicly funded broadcaster, and is required by law to operate independently of political parties and government control while serving the public interest.
The prolonged stalemate over board appointments has raised concerns about governance stability and editorial independence amid Taiwan’s highly polarized political environment, as the board plays a central role in overseeing management, budgets and editorial direction.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS