Taiwan election season embroiled in #MeToo furor

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Taiwan’s election campaign has been spiked with #MeToo intrigue after some 20 sexual harassment cases were alleged by victims and anonymous sources.

On June 6, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen apologized for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s mishandling of a series of sexual harassment cases and promised to improve the government’s complaints channel to encourage #MeToo victims to report their cases.

Lai Ching-te, chairman of the DPP and potential candidate for the presidential elections next January, said the party will seriously handle every complaint and punish those who tried to cover up the cases. He admitted that the reported #MeToo cases over the last week had hurt the reputation of the DPP.

Kuomintang (KMT), the largest opposition party, has leveraged the controversy to attack the DPP. But it, too, has been accused of mishandling several sex-related cases in recent years.

Ko Wen-je, chairman of Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and a presidential candidate, said he does not want sexual harassment cases to be used as political weapons at the upcoming elections.

China’s state media, including China Central TV, said Tuesday that at least 20 sexual harassment cases related to the DPP, KMT and TPP have been identified. Some news websites only mentioned the DPP’s cases and said Taiwanese people should vote down the party in the presidential elections next January.

At least ten #MeToo cases in the DPP were made public after Chen Chien-jou, a former DPP worker, said in a Facebook post on May 31 that she was sexually harassed by a film director several months ago.

Chen said her case was mishandled by Hsu Chia-tien, deputy secretary-general of the DPP and head of the party’s women’s affairs department, who asked for all the details but then left her to decide by herself whether she wanted to file a case.

Hsu resigned from her positions in the party on June 1 with her resignation accepted by Lai. Hsu has not made any comments as the DPP is investigating the case. Many other sexual harassment cases were then reported by Taiwanese media.

Among them, Tsai Wan-fen, then director of DPP women’s affairs department, was accused of receiving a case without bringing it to a higher level in the party, according to an anonymous source. Tsai said Wednesday that the case was closed without an investigation as the victim did not want to expose it.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s DPP has taken a #MeToo hit on the campaign trail. Photo: AFP

President Tsai said in a Facebook post that she has held several meetings with Premier Chen Chien-jen and decided to reform the government’s complaint system in three ways:

  • Follow the interactional practice and introduce a set of guidelines about gender equality to workplaces and schools;
  • Set up a more robust, effective and credible complaint system to allow victims to report their cases without fear; and
  • Amend relevant laws and push forward the promotion of gender equality.

“Recent events are not about politics or elections, but they remind us that apart from apologizing, we must work together to shape a safer and friendlier society,” Tsai says.

“Victims often do not come forward to accuse the perpetrators due to various concerns, and they have to suffer more during the investigation process,” she added. “Our society as a whole must re-educate ourselves. Victims of sexual harassment are not the wrongdoers. They are the people we want to protect, not the people to be treated with prejudice.”

KMT spokesman Yang Chih-yu on June 2 criticized the DPP for promoting gender equality while failing to correct its own failings. Yang said Tsai should be responsible for many cases, which happened at the time when she was DPP chairperson. 

But then, Taiwanese journalist Dong Cheng-Yu wrote in a Facebook post that she had been kissed on her head by a KMT county chief without her consent during a meal with journalists and politicians in 2014. She said she had immediately scolded the county chief but did not tell the public until now.

Hou You-yi, a KMT presidential candidate, said the party should investigate the case. He said the party will not tolerate any sexual harassment offenses.

In the past few days, more cases involving political parties have been reported.

KMT lawmaker Hsu Chiao-hsin said on Monday that a DPP member surnamed Luo was accused of sending pictures of himself naked to dozens of male colleagues in 2019 but he is still allowed to work for the Tainan city government. Hsu said the person was a KMT lawmaker’s assistant before 2020.
 
An index that reflects netizens’ impressions of the DPP had risen from 0.3 in April to 0.53 in mid-May but it dropped to 0.21 after a sexual harassment case was reported on May 31, according to a survey conducted by the Taiwan Public Opinion Research Center.

However, a survey conducted by CNEWS, a Taiwanese news media, on May 31 and June 1 showed that President Lai was still leading in support with 35.5%, followed by Hou (32.1%) and Ko (24.4%).

Alex Tsai, a former member of the Legislative Yuan, said Hou is in an unfavorable situation as he fell behind Ko in Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan counties. Tsai said Hou should use the DPP scandals to gain more votes from women, he said.

Read: Taiwan pushes FTA after closing US trade deal

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

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Kathleen Folbigg: A pardon after 20 years as ‘Australia’s worst mother’

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Kathleen Folbigg.EPA
By Hannah Ritchie
BBC News, Sydney

Kathleen Folbigg has been called many names. A “baby killer”, “Australia’s worst mother”, a “monster”.

But on Monday, Ms Folbigg said she was “extremely grateful” as she walked free for the first time in 20 years, after being pardoned of killing her four children.

The historic decision follows one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history, her lawyers say, and it has held up a microscope to what experts call “demonstrably unreliable and misogynistic” evidence that helped convict her in 2003.

It was a case mired in suffering that created a media frenzy and saw Ms Folbigg’s husband testify against her at trial.

Ultimately it would be the advocacy of friends and new findings from scientists around the world – including Nobel laureates – that saw her freed.

Re-examining the original conviction

Ms Folbigg, who has always maintained her innocence, has lived a life haunted by trauma.

Before her second birthday, her father – who had a history of domestic abuse – stabbed her mother to death. In the year that followed, she shuffled between the homes of relatives before finally being fostered to a couple in Newcastle, New South Wales (NSW).

It’s an incident that prosecutors would later use against Ms Folbigg at trial, to argue she was predisposed to violence.

In 2003, she was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murders of her children Sarah, Patrick and Laura, as well as the manslaughter of her first son Caleb.

All four children had died suddenly between 1989 and 1999, aged between 19 days and 18 months. Prosecutors alleged Ms Folbigg had smothered them.

Caleb, who had been suffering from mild laryngomalacia – a condition that impacts breathing – died in his sleep in 1989.

Patrick, who was diagnosed with cortical blindness and epilepsy, died soon after as the result of a seizure. Sarah and Laura – who had both suffered from respiratory infections – also died in their cots.

Laura (left) and Patrick (right)

EPA

Ms Folbigg’s sentence was later reduced on appeal to 30 years, but she lost a string of challenges against her convictions. A 2019 inquiry into the case only gave greater weight to the original circumstantial evidence used to jail her.

But this week a fresh inquiry, headed by retired judge Tom Bathurst, concluded there was reasonable doubt over Ms Folbigg’s guilt, due to new scientific evidence that her children could have died of natural causes because of incredibly rare gene mutations.

The research was spearheaded by Carola Vinuesa, a professor of immunology and genomic medicine at Australian National University. She first began looking into the case in 2018 amid growing concerns from medical experts.

After sequencing Ms Folbigg’s DNA, Prof Vinuesa and her team created a genetic map, which they then used to identify mutated genes.

One of the most significant, known as CALM2 G114R, was present in Ms Folbigg and her two daughters. Stunningly, research has linked it to a rare condition that occurs in one in every 35 million people, and can cause serious cardiac abnormalities.

That’s because the CALM G1142R genetic variant can interfere with the passage of calcium ions into cells – that ultimately can stop the heart from beating.

The research from Prof Vinuesa’s team also uncovered that Caleb and Patrick possessed a different genetic mutation, linked to sudden-onset epilepsy in mice.

The findings tipped the scales in Ms Folbigg’s case, proving that the chances of her children dying from cardiac abnormalities in infancy were disturbingly high.

A debunked theory and other flaws

It was her daughter Laura’s death in February 1999 that sparked the initial police investigation into Ms Folbigg.

“My baby’s not breathing,” she told an ambulance operator at the time, speaking from her home in the rural town of Singleton.

“I’ve had three Sids [sudden infant death syndrome] deaths already,” she continued in a recording, which was later played at her trial.

Laura’s death meant Ms Folbigg and her husband Craig Folbigg had lost all of their children.

But while Mr Folbigg was initially interviewed and arrested as part of the investigation, he soon began helping the police build their case against his wife, handing over her personal diaries and testifying against her.

During the 2019 inquiry into the case, he refused to provide a DNA sample requested by her lawyers. Mr Folbigg’s lawyers say he remains convinced of his ex-wife’s guilt to this day.

The prosecution’s main argument in the 2003 trial was that it was a statistical improbability that so many of Ms Folbigg’s children could have died accidentally.

Kathleen Folbigg leaving Maitland Court after being refused bail on 22 March 2004

Fairfax Media/Getty Images

In their reasoning, they cited a now widely discredited legal concept known as “Meadow’s Law”, which contends that “one sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder until proved otherwise”.

The principle is named after Roy Meadow, who was once described as Britain’s most eminent paediatrician. But his reputation declined rapidly after a string of wrongful convictions in cases that relied on his theory.

In 2005 he was struck off the UK’s medical register for giving misleading evidence in the trial of Sally Clark – a solicitor who was found guilty and jailed for the murders of her two infant sons in 1999.

Ms Clark’s conviction was quashed in 2003, but relatives said she never recovered from the trauma of her ordeal, and she died from acute alcohol poisoning in 2007.

Emma Cunliffe, a law professor at the University of British Columbia who wrote a book examining Ms Folbigg’s case, says Meadow’s Law was “heavily challenged by medical research” from its inception, and “always at odds with the principle that the state bears the burden of proving crime beyond a reasonable doubt”.

“In Commonwealth countries, the practice of charging mothers based on a suspicion about a pattern of infant death in a family, more or less ceased entirely after 2004,” Prof Cunliffe explains.

“Ms Clark’s wrongful conviction was the first salvo against Meadow’s Law. But it was the case of Angela Cannings in 2004 in which the English Court of Appeal said “this reasoning has no place in our courts”.

“It should have then been excluded from legal reasoning entirely, but it took longer in Australia.”

It wasn’t the only flaw in Ms Folbigg’s case. The evidence used by the prosecution was entirely circumstantial, relying on Ms Folbigg’s diaries – which were never examined by psychologists or psychiatrists at trial – to paint her as an unstable mother, prone to rage.

In one entry, penned in 1997 shortly after her daughter Laura’s birth, Ms Folbigg wrote: “One day [she] will leave. The others did, but this one’s not going in the same fashion. This time I’m prepared and know what signals to watch out for in myself.”

This and similar comments were argued to be an admission of guilt. But in a 2022 inquiry into the case, psychological and psychiatric experts rejected this portrayal.

“In relation to the diary entries, evidence suggests they were the writings of a… depressed mother, blaming herself for the death of each child, as distinct from admissions that she murdered or otherwise harmed them,” NSW Attorney General Michael Daley said when announcing Ms Folbigg’s pardon this week.

Prof Cunliffe argues that at its core Ms Folbigg’s conviction in 2003 relied on “casual misogyny” and “thinly veiled stereotypes about women”.

“Within a criminal case when a mother is suspected of harming children, the notion of what constitutes good mothering becomes a lot narrower, so behaviours that are seen as mundane are cast as suspicious,” she says.

Prof Cunliffe adds the prosecution used “discriminatory reasoning” to depict Ms Folbigg as a supposedly unfit mother, in order to cast her as a killer.

“They pointed to the fact that she was leaving Sarah on Saturday mornings with family members to work at a part-time job to earn more money for the household as evidence that she didn’t love Sarah, didn’t want to care for her, and therefore was capable of murdering Sarah,” she says.

‘First time sleeping properly in 20 years’

In a video statement after her release, Ms Folbigg said she felt “humbled” by her pardon, but that she would “always grieve for… and miss” her four children.

Her first night out of prison was spent eating pizza with her oldest friend Tracy Chapman – who had led the campaign to see Ms Folbigg freed.

“She slept in a real bed. She’s actually said it was the first time she’s been able to sleep properly in 20 years,” Ms Chapman later told reporters.

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Though Ms Folbigg was given a pardon, her convictions remain – meaning she still faces a long road ahead if she wishes to have them quashed and seek compensation.

The first step will be for retired judge Tom Bathurst to file a full report on the case, before referring it to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal which will have the final say.

“There’s no good automatic process in Australia for evaluating questions of compensation in circumstances where wrongful convictions arise,” Prof Cunliffe says.

“Yet again, Kathleen will find herself potentially having to engage in an adversarial process in order to prove her entitlement to compensation.”

As for the ripple effects of the case – experts argue Ms Folbigg’s pardon has shed light on how slow Australia’s legal system was to respond to new scientific findings.

“The question must now be asked: how do we create a system where complex and emerging science can inform the justice system more readily?” the Australian Academy of Sciences said in a statement this week.

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Shangri-La notebook: Happily, WWIII is not imminent

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Every year since 2002, barring two Covid-caused cancellations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies has convened the Shangri-La Dialogue, named after the Singapore hotel in which it takes place but nonetheless a name redolent of a Chinese utopia.

It is an amazing gathering of defense ministers and senior military officials from all around Asia – more uniforms and gold braid than I have ever seen in any other context – plus the US secretary of defense and equivalents from Canada, Australia and sundry European countries.

It is therefore dedicated to helping prevent an Asian dystopia – in other words, a World War Three between the United States and China. Full disclosure: I chair the board of the IISS, which is why I attend every year.

Further disclosure: I am currently doing research for a book for IISS on how to avoid World War Three in Asia (not the actual title) so I snooped around this meeting with even greater attention than usual. Here are some observations from the event, in no particular order:

Japan

For the first time, Japan was the talk of the Shangri-La town for its dramatic 2022 decision to break free of its post-1945 pacifist constitution’s constraints and to expand its defense budget to become the world’s third-largest by 2027.

This, along with a new National Security Strategy last December that announced a major move toward a much more forward-leaning and active military posture, has suddenly made it a major player in the region.

In part, this is because, while Japan is allied with the United States, it is not America. It does not spark any public backlash when it starts to provide the Philippines with 10 new coastguard vessels to help protect its islands and fishing grounds against Chinese incursions or provides millions of dollars in grants to help build the Philippines’ military capabilities or negotiates a reciprocal access agreement for each other’s forces in each others’ countries.

Japanese sailors walk off the helicopter carrier Ise in front of a US supply ship at the former US naval base, Subic port, north of Manila, April 26, 2016. Photo: Asia Times files / AFP/ Ted Aljibe

Moreover, Japan’s economic influence and diplomacy in Southeast Asia, whether in the form of public or private investments or of its leading role in the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) of 11 Asia-Pacific nations for trade and investment rules, is regarded far more highly than is the tepid economic outreach of the United States, with its so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (summary: we’ll talk to you about anything other than free trade).

China-US

The two elephants in the Shangri-La room, China and the United States, essentially engaged in a communications game, vying to assign blame to each other for stirring up regional tensions and for failing to honor international law.

Turning to football parlance, my view would be that the United States won the game by about a 5-1 score, with that one Chinese success being a US own-goal for having maintained a deeply pointless set of sanctions on China’s new Minister of Defense General Li Shengfe, for his supposed transgressions in doing business with Russia during a previous role.

This handed China a perfect excuse for refusing to accept the US’s proposal of a private one-to-one meeting between General Li and the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and made the US look foolish. Nonetheless, the two sat down facing each other at the same table at the conference’s opening dinner; Li accepted Secretary Austin’s offer of a handshake; and Austin accepted Li’s later offer of a mutual toast.

The Singaporeans, who pride themselves on maintaining a friendly and apparent equidistance between both sides (even while collaborating pretty deeply with the US military), will have been very happy.

The reason why, on my football metaphor, China ended up conceding so many goals is that, in Li’s formal speech and in many of the questions posed to other speakers by the largest Chinese delegation that had ever been sent to this event, the Chinese failed to respect either the interests or the intelligence of the many Southeast Asian countries sitting in the audience.

The posture China took was a self-righteous one of claiming to be a great defender of international law, a firm believer in treating other countries with mutual respect and the greatest exponent of “ASEAN centrality” – that is, considering the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to be its main and respected interlocutor.

Yet every single senior official or scholar present from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and many others knew that if anyone were to follow Deng Xiaoping’s exhortation to “seek truth from facts” they would instantly see that China’s own actions show up this posture as hypocritical nonsense.

They know that in the South China and East China Seas China violates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on a daily basis, even while being a signatory to it, and ignores “ASEAN centrality” by trying to pick off member countries one by one.

They know that the country that accuses others of “bullying” and “hegemonic” behavior is itself guilty of both. By highlighting this vast gap between its pious rhetoric and its real actions, China made the clearest possible case to countries in the region for maintaining and even enhancing the American military’s presence as a balancing force.

‘Hegemonic navigation’

One striking and clear example of China’s domineering attitude was General Li’s use of the phrase “hegemonic navigation.” He used this in an effort to discredit the so-called “freedom of navigation operations” that American and other naval ships practice in the international waters of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

South China Sea. Mlap: Asia Times files

The phrase appeared designed to imply to Southeast Asian nations that the American, Australian, French, British, German, Dutch and Japanese ships sailing in these international waters are somehow seeking to dominate those seas rather than to maintain open international sea lanes.

When challenged over recent allegedly dangerous intercepts of American vessels and planes by Chinese ships and fighters, his answer was straightforward: such incidents would not happen if those American ships and planes hadn’t been there, poking their noses in what he clearly considered Chinese business. He also claimed that China never flies or sails close to other countries’ territorial waters, a claim that was clearly news to Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, let alone Taiwan.

The underlying point was clear: China considers that the entire South China Sea belongs to it (in accordance with its notorious “nine-dash line” map), despite all legal rulings to the contrary. The real “hegemonic navigator” was on full display. 

Substantially for that reason, the clearest trend highlighted by the weekend’s discussions was the considerable progress the Biden administration has made in using its direct security alliances (with Japan, South Korea and Australia) and less formal partnerships (with the Philippines, Singapore and others) to extend its military basing, exercises and logistical network in the region.

Far from being considered “provocative” by the region, this latticework of collaboration and, in some cases, deterrence, is considered to be welcome.

Philippines 

The Philippines in particular is now enthusiastic about this expanded American presence, especially as it is coming in partnership with Japan and Australia.

The surprising but revealing point about Chinese behavior is that it is so blatant and stubborn: During the 2016-22 presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, who made overtures towards Beijing in the hope of receiving economic rewards for accepting China’s rebuttal of a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling on the international legal status of atolls and shoals in the South China Sea, China made lots of offers but Filipino officials reckon it delivered on “about 5%” of its promises.

Meanwhile, China continued to bully Filipino fishermen and operate freely in Filipino territorial waters. Seduction of former president Duterte would have been cheap, but China either couldn’t be bothered or didn’t think it needed to.

No wonder his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has swung so firmly towards America and Japan, providing the US military with access to four bases where it can now pre-position equipment and supplies, and negotiating the deals with Japan that were mentioned earlier.

Ukraine

The European star of the Shangri-La Dialogue was undoubtedly Ukraine. Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s minister of defense, put up an impressively clear and robust outline of his country’s situation and intentions.

When Indonesia’s defense minister, Prabowo Subianto, surprised his own officials by proposing a “peace plan” for Ukraine that involved a demilitarized zone separating Russian-occupied territories from the rest of Ukraine and referendums in those occupied territories, he drew a pointedly disdainful comment by a Vietnamese questioner who resented Prabowo’s claim that Vietnam somehow provided a historical precedent for this idea.

It was plain that Prabowo’s “plan” was not resonant even in a region quite prone to the “Why can’t they just talk and be friends?” argument.

Indonesia’s defense minister, Prabowo Subianto, speaks in favor of his Ukraine peace plan. Photo: Twitter Screengrab

And then Reznikov neatly skewered Prabowo’s ideas as “a Russian plan.” None of the Chinese officials and scholars present succeeded in convincing attendees that China’s “position paper” on Ukraine had yet come within a million miles of being an actual peace plan.

Estonia

It was, however, Kaja Kallas, the youthful prime minister of Estonia, who provided the most convincing case for backing Ukraine and for opposing Russian imperialism when she outlined the history of Russian invasion and colonization of her country during the 20th century, involving mass killings, deportations and active replacement of Estonians with Russian settlers – a playbook that, as she pointed out, Russia is following again today in Ukraine.

Her own family history of suffering at Russian hands added further poignancy.

One cannot know whether those present who are susceptible to the argument that “NATO expansionism” is somehow responsible for Russia’s decision to invade a non-NATO country will have been persuaded by Kallas to change their minds, but few will have discounted her description of why the small, vulnerable state of Estonia wanted to become a NATO member in 2004 and, following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, to host a small NATO force inside its borders so as to help deter Russian interference or invasion.

Taiwan

Naturally, the voice that was not heard was that of Taiwan. But everybody’s mind was on Taiwan and the prospect of a Chinese attempt to coerce the Taiwanese into “unification” through a blockade or full invasion.

Li read out the official Chinese line on this: that Taiwan is an internal matter for China in which outside powers should not interfere; that under all past agreements it should be moving towards unification; that China reserves the right to use force if necessary.

Rightly, he warned that a superpower conflict over Taiwan (or anything else) would be a global disaster. Yet the general mood was calm.

If Ukraine holds lessons for Taiwan it is that an invasion would be hugely costly and risky; that Western willingness to support the victims of an invasion is far greater and more durable than either Russia or China previously imagined; and that the more invading forces need to step over, destroy or circumvent Taiwanese or Western military assets, the riskier and more costly it will get.

Moreover, Taiwan is holding a presidential election next January, so it makes sense to wait and see whether the more status quo-oriented Democratic People’s Party retains power or is displaced by the more emollient Kuomintang. Whatever the Chinese equivalent of mañana may be, it is currently the best sort of reassurance available.

Currently an independent writer, lecturer and consultant on international affairs, Bill Emmott from 1993 to 2o06 was editor-in-chief of The Economist. 

This article was originally published by his Substack publication, Bill Emmott’s Global View. (Subscribe here for free to receive his posts.) It is republished by Asia Times with kind permission. Follow the author on Twitter @bill_emmott

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EC yet to accept iTV case against Pita

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Poll body received complaint late and has been busy reviewing vote results and related issues

Move Forward Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat (centre), joins Pheu Thai leader Cholnan Srikaew (left), Prachachart Party leader Wan Muhammad Nor Matha (right) and other key members of the eight coalition parties as they arrive for a meeting at Pheu Thai headquarters in Bangkok on Wednesday. (Photo: Viruth Hiranyatheb)
Move Forward Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat (centre), joins Pheu Thai leader Cholnan Srikaew (left), Prachachart Party leader Wan Muhammad Nor Matha (right) and other key members of the eight coalition parties as they arrive for a meeting at Pheu Thai headquarters in Bangkok on Wednesday. (Photo: Viruth Hiranyatheb)

The Election Commission (EC) says it is still considering whether to accept a complaint filed against Move Forward Party (MFP) leader Pita Limjaroenrat over his shareholding in a media company.

Chairman Ittiporn Boonpracong said on Wednesday that the commission had not yet decided whether there are grounds for the allegation and whether an inquiry panel should be set up.

On May 10, political activist Ruangkrai Leekitwattana petitioned the poll agency to investigate Mr Pita over 42,000 shares he held in iTV, an independent broadcaster founded in the 1990s that went off the air in 2007.

Mr Ruangkrai is a prolific petitioner, best known for bringing a complaint against then-prime minister Samak Sundaravej in 2008 for conflict of interest because he accepted a small sum for hosting a TV cooking show. The Constitutional Court agreed and Samak had to leave office.

Under the current constitution, an election candidate is barred from running for office if he or she owns shares in a media company.

Mr Pita said on Wednesday that he was waiting for details from the EC, and he did not think there would be any political accident undermining his bid to become the next prime minister.

A source at the EC said that under the election law, any complaint regarding a lack of qualifications for office should be filed within seven days after the EC announces the list of registered candidates.

The complaint against Mr Pita was filed just four days before the election, so the EC had no time to investigate as it was busy organising the polls, the source said.

The investigation will start after the poll results are endorsed, the source said, adding that if the EC finds sufficient grounds to the allegation, it will forward the case to the Constitutional Court.

Mr Ittiporn said on the weekend that 95% of the MPs-elect would be endorsed well ahead of the 60-day deadline in mid-July.

Mr Pita said on Tuesday that he had recently transferred the iTV shares, held in the estate of his late father who died in 2006, to his relatives to ensure he could be the next prime minister amid attempts to block him from taking office.

Pita sees a plot

In a Facebook post he said that attempts were being made to revive iTV as a “mass media” organisation in a bid to attack him.

He said that in its 2018-19 financial statement, iTV was defined as a holding company, but in the two following financial statements, it was labelled a TV organisation.

iTV stopped broadcasting in 2007 and its licence was taken over by Thai PBS. It was delisted from the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2014. It has not had any income from media activity for several years, beyond small sums from a subsidiary that rented out broadcasting equipment. Its business registration remains active only because litigation over its concession fees is not yet concluded.

Mr Pita noted, however, that at an iTV shareholders’ meeting on April 26, one shareholder asked if it was a media organisation. “Was the question politically motivated?” the Move Forward leader wrote on Facebook.

His family concluded he should transfer the shares in case there were “attempts to revive iTV as a media organisation”, Mr Pita wrote.

Intouch connection

The largest current shareholder of iTV is Intouch Holdings Plc, the parent company of the mobile operator Advanced Info Service, founded by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Intouch holds 638.6 million iTV shares worth 3.2 billion baht at par value.

The major shareholder of Intouch is Gulf Energy Development Plc. Gulf CEO Sarath Ratanavadi is the country’s fourth richest person with a net worth of $11.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Mr Sarath has good relations with a number of government ministers. Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, the caretaker Digital Economy and Society Minister, is a former executive of Gulf.

Nareuwat Noppakhun, the head of the accounting department at Intouch, prepared and submitted the financial statements of iTV to the Department of Business Development between 2015 and 2022, Isara News Agency reported.

In the 2018-19 financial year, iTV was described as taking part in “activities of a holding company that does not primarily invest in financial business”. In 2020-21, “television media” was listed in the product/service section, with the note: “currently not operating due to litigation”.

In fiscal 2022, the products/services section listed “advertising media and return on investment”.

Mr Nareuwat declined to comment when contacted by Isara about how the company’s business was described in the statements.

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Apple Vision Pro: headset hype or new reality?

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Apple recently unveiled its Vision Pro headset at the Worldwide Developers Conference in California. With it, Apple is venturing into a market of head-mounted devices (HMDs) – which are usually just displays, but in this case is more of a complete computer attached to your head – as well as the worlds of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR).

The new Apple product will fuel the hopes of many working on these technologies that they will some day be routinely used by the public, just as the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch helped bring smartphones, tablets and wearable tech into mainstream use.

But what does the Vision Pro actually do, and how much mass appeal will it have?

VR immerses users in an entirely computer-generated world, isolating them to a large degree from their physical surroundings. AR superimposes computer-generated elements onto the real world while the latter remains visible, with the purpose of enhancing the context of our physical surroundings.

A term often used interchangeably with AR is mixed reality, referring to a set of immersive technologies including AR, that provide different “blends” of physical and virtual worlds. These three technologies are often collectively referred to as XR.

The blending of VR and AR seems to be a key part of Apple’s thinking, with the Vision Pro allowing users to adjust their level of immersion by deciding how much of the real world they can see. This transitioning between the two experiences will probably be a trend for future HMDs.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook was at the unveiling at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in California. Photo: EPA Images via The Conversation / John G Mabanglo

The physical world is “seen” through an array of 12 cameras located behind a ski-goggle-like glass fascia, acting as a lens. When the Vision Pro is in VR mode, people approaching you in the real world are automatically detected and displayed as they get close.

A feature called EyeSight also displays the wearer’s eyes through the glass lens when needed, to enable more natural interaction with people around them – a challenge for many HMDs.

In terms of technical specifications, the Vision Pro is impressive. It uses a combination of the M2 microchip and a new chip called the R1. M2 is running visionOS, which Apple calls its first spatial operating system, along with computer vision algorithms and computer graphics generation.

R1 processes information from the cameras, an array of microphones and a LiDAR scanner – which uses a laser to measure distances to different objects – in order to make the headset aware of its surroundings.

More importantly, the Vision Pro boasts an impressive display system with “more pixels than a 4K TV to each eye.” Its ability to track where the wearer’s eyes are looking allows users to interact with graphical elements just by looking at them.

The headset can receive gesture and voice commands and features a form of 360-degree sound called spatial audio. The quoted unplugged operating time is two hours.

Wearable ‘ecosystem’

Packed, in typical Apple fashion, in curved aluminum and glass, the headset has an eye-watering price of US$3,499 and represents a collection of many premium features. But Apple has a history of developing products with increasingly versatile capabilities to sense what’s going on in their real-world surroundings.

Tim Cook (L) and Apple Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi speak during the conference keynote address.
Tim Cook (L) and Apple Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi speak during the conference keynote address. Photo: Joe Manbanglo / EPA Images via The Conversation

Apple also focuses on making its devices interoperable – meaning they work easily with other Apple devices – forming a wearable “ecosystem.” This is what really promises to be disruptive about the Vision Pro. It is also akin to what had been promised and hoped for by pioneers in the idea of wearable computing back in the 1990s.

Combining the headset with the iPhone, which still forms the backbone of Apple’s ecosystem, and the Apple Watch could help create new uses for augmented reality. Likewise, linking the headset to many programming tools demonstrates the company’s desire to tap into an existing community of developers of augmented reality applications.

Many questions remain, however. For example, will it be able to access mixed reality applications via a web browser? What will it be like to use from an ergonomic point of view?

It’s also unclear when the Vision Pro be available outside the US or whether there will be a non-Pro version – as the “Pro” part of the title implies a more “expert”, or developer market.

The Vision Pro is a gamble, as XR is often seen as something that promises but rarely delivers. Yet, companies such as Apple and those that are probably its primary competitors in the XR domain, Meta and Microsoft, have the clout to make XR popular for the general public.

More importantly, devices such as the Vision Pro and its ecosystem, as well as its competitors could provide the foundation for developing the metaverse. This is an immersive world, facilitated by headsets, that aims for social interaction that’s more natural than with previous products.

Sceptics will say that Vision Pro and EyeSight make you appear like a scuba diver in your living room. But this could finally be the time to dive into the deep waters of XR.

Panagiotis Ritsos, Senior Lecturer in Visualisation, Bangor University and Peter Butcher, Lecturer in Human Computer Interaction, Bangor University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Indonesia to deport Australian surfer after drunken assault

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BANDA ACEH: An Australian surfer detained after launching a drunken assault in Indonesia’s most conservative province will be deported, officials said Wednesday (Jun 7). Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones, 23, from Noosa in southern Queensland was facing five years in prison after attacking several people in April on the surf island ofContinue Reading