Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Han Kuo-yu/Facebook
A PROPOSAL BY the KMT to allow the government, political parties, and the military to indirectly invest in up to 10% of broadcast media proves an unusual proposal. This proves particularly ironic at a time when the KMT has frequently attacked successive DPP presidential administrations over the claim that the DPP clamps down on media through the regulatory body of the National Communications Commission (NCC).
Current regulations prohibit the government. political parties, or the military from investing or indirectly investing in broadcast media. This is a means of preventing undue influence from the government over broadcast media. Nevertheless, KMT legislator Chen Hsueh-sheng, who raised the proposal, claims that the current laws prove an obstacle to the growth of media and that financial investment from the government would stimulate growth in the media sector.
It is as yet somewhat unclear what the KMT intends to accomplish through this proposal. For one, the KMT may be seeking to inject funds into media outlets it is close to, accomplishing this directly through the party rather than through individual KMT politicians.
The proposal proves somewhat unusual considering that the KMT has been reported on as being cash-strapped in past years, with the loss of party assets retained from property seizures during the authoritarian period. As such, the party has reportedly faced issues paying staff in recent years, leading the KMT to take loans from individuals such as the mother of Foxconn founder Terry Gou, through his mother, in order to cover expenses.
Alternatively, and more plausibly, it is possible that the KMT hopes to fund media outlets favorable to it through the state. Through control of state institutions, the KMT would be able to bankroll media outlets to report on news with its preferred political slant.
KMT president of the Legislative Yuan Han Kuo-yu. Photo credit: Han Kuo-yu/Facebook
If so, it is expected that the KMT would seek to subordinate such media outlets to the legislature. Using its current slim majority in the legislature, the KMT sought to strip away powers that normally belong to the executive and judicial branches of government earlier this year through legislation that prompted the protests known as the Bluebird Movement. Likewise, the KMT called for the revival of institutions used to investigate political enemies of the KMT in the past, such as the Special Investigation Division, and for the reinstatement of such institutions under control of the legislature rather than the executive branch of government.
More recently, the KMT has proposed legislation aimed at freezing the Constitutional Court. The KMT likely is aiming to block other branches of government it does not control from functioning. As for relegating powers that normally belong to the executive and judicial branches of government to the legislature, this is probably due to the fact that the KMT does not control those branches of government at present, and does not expect to be able to retake the presidency anytime in the future.
As such, the KMT is leveraging on its current control of the legislature in order to try and accrue power. Indeed, even if the KMT may be unable to win national elections at present and probably did not actually win the popular vote in the legislature during the last elections given how districts are drawn up, clientelist and patronage networks deeply rooted in Taiwanese society dating back to the authoritarian period, make its campaigning stronger at the local level.
Still, such actions by the KMT undercut its claims to be defending media freedoms with regard to actions such as seeking to block the Lai administration’s planned appointments to the NCC. The KMT has focused fire on that some NCC appointments are of academics formerly active in the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement, which broke out in 2012 against industrialist Tsai Eng-meng’s efforts to purchase Taiwanese media outlets and steer them in a pro-China direction, so as to facilitate his pro-unification political aims. Tsai’s actions were termed “media monopoly” at the time, hence the name of the movement. Similarly, the KMT has honed in on the approval for the broadcast of Mirror TV after pan-Blue CtiTV was taken off air for violations including inflating the crowd count of Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu’s inauguration and reporting that an “auspicious cloud” shaped like a phoenix had appeared above a gathering of three KMT mayors. The KMT also suggested it hopes to put CtiTV back on air.
One notes that in recent times, the KMT has again tried to reintroduce political issues from a decade prior, such as proposing the restart of talks over the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement. This occurs in spite of the trade agreement leading to significant pushback in the form of the Sunflower Movement occupation of the legislature a decade prior. This may also be the case with KMT efforts aimed at again pushing for media monopoly.