Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Public confidence in Tsai rises as Ma drops

Taipei Times

Public confidence in Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her party reached new highs this month while President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trust level continued to drop, the latest poll released by the Chinese-language Global Views Monthly magazine showed.

The poll, conducted by the Global Views Survey Research Center, put Tsai’s confidence index at 52.3 points on a scale of 0 to 100. The figure represented an increase of 1.1 points from last month and was the highest since May.

Megacities face finance issues: experts

Taipei Times

Taipei City and the four special municipalities that came into being on Saturday could turn into a disaster for the central and local governments if underlying financial problems are not properly addressed, experts told a forum on the financial aspects of the five megacities yesterday.

Peng Pai-hsien (彭百顯), a professor of finance at Kainan University, told a panel organized by the Taiwan Brain Trust think tank in Taipei that the five special municipalities face an immediate shortfall of NT$718.5 billion (US$24.27 billion) — which would climb to NT$803.4 billion if potential debt were counted — while the central government was faring no better, with a potential debt of NT$21 trillion.

Draft law threatens media freedoms

Lu I-ming 呂一銘

Over the past year, there have been many moves to push a draft law aimed at protecting the welfare and interests of children and youths. Strong opinions both for and against this law have focused on technical issues related to how news-gathering agencies should appropriately handle reporting crimes. It should be possible to find a balance to avoid media sensationalism that the public finds unacceptable and, given journalistic self-regulation, legislation, market demands and other controls that are already in place, this shouldn’t be very difficult to achieve.

However, taking a look at the details of the draft law, it is worrying to see that it includes articles about what newspapers can print. This is tantamount to bringing the Publishing Act (出版法), which was scrapped years ago, back to life. This would deal a huge blow to Taiwan’s press freedom and its democracy.

Chen not seeking amnesty

Taipei Times

Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said he welcomed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government to rule him out of any commutation it might grant next year to mark the Republic of China’s (ROC) 100th anniversary, his son, Chen Chih-chung (陳致中) said.

The former president began serving a 17-and-a-half-year sentence at Taipei Prison on Dec. 2 after being convicted of accepting bribes in connection with a land deal and a personnel appointment.

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