Taiwan's government spokesman was forced to step down Tuesday over accusations by Fuji Television Network that he had tried to intervene in the Japanese company's sale of shares in a Taiwanese media outlet, his boss said according to dpa. "Director Cheng submitted his resignation to me yesterday, saying he did not want his case to become the target of attack to the ruling team," Premier Su Tseng-chang said in a brief news conference. "I have no choice but to accept his resignation despite his outstanding performance in the past year," said the premier, who had been criticized by opposition parliamentarians for adopting double standards in order to protect his spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang. Cheng, who headed the Government Information Office, the island's print media regulator, recently came under fire for improperly intervening in Fuji's sale of shares in Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV). The controversy emerged when Sumio Hasegawa, an adviser to Fuji TV's chairman, held a news conference in Taipei last week, alleging that the spokesman tried to persuade Fuji sell it's stake TTV to a pro-government newspaper. Hasegawa said that during a trip to Taipei, Cheng invited him to a lunch on January 17 and asked that Fuji TV sell its 5-per-cent stake in TTV to Taiwan's Liberty Times Group.
