Gov't in legal row with KMT-run radio station

The state-run radio station, the Central Broadcasting System (CBS), recently lost a legal battle to the BCC over the ownership of the land in Chiayi County, but Premier Yu Shyi-kun has refused to give up, said Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-long yesterday.

Yu has decided on a “double track” strategy, ordering the transport ministry — which funded the purchase of the land to sue the BCC, while the CBS files an appeal against the Chiayi District Court verdict, Lin said.

The land in the southern county’s rural Minhsiung township was bought with transport ministry money in 1951 for the erecting of a transmission tower for the use of the CBS, which was then under the BCC, Lin said.

But the land was registered under the BCC at a time when transfer of government property to the KMT — the ruling party in Taiwan between 1945 and 2000 — was taken for granted.

The BCC remains a KMT establishment, but CBS has become a corporate body funded by the government since 1996.

Trying to re-establish its ownership, the BCC earlier this year took legal action the CBS, which still operates the Minhsiung transmission tower, and won the lawsuit in late November.

Lin said it was the transport ministry who bought the land and registered it under the BCC in line with the government’s overseas propaganda program.

Yu maintains that the government must set straight the ownership problems dating from the days when national property was often “stolen” by the KMT.

But the KMT said it hopes the legal battle will be free of political interference.

Chang Che-chen, head of the party’s administrative committee, said the KMT has already returned more than 120 plots of real estate to their original owners since Lien Chan became chairman in 2000 and began reassessing its assets.

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