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MOI seeks right to dissolve groups

Questionable party * The China Solidarity Party was registered in 1989 by Wu Chih-yi. * Wu recruited members by promising party positions in China * Memberships were sold for between NT$6,000 and NT$1 million. * Among those who signed up were veterans and disabled senior citizens

Minister of the Interior Su Jia- chyuan (蘇嘉全) yesterday backed a new legislative bill seeking to enable the government to dissolve organizations which were using their registration as political parties to cover up illegal activities.

The bill seeks to stop organizations raising money through the selling of party memberships or the soliciting of campaign donations and yet have no intention of fighting elections.

Su's comments were prompted by a case that came to light last week after the Wan-an precinct of the Taipei City Police Department received numerous phone calls from members of the public complaining that they had paid large sums of money for membership of the China Solidarity Party.

A police investigation found the party's registered office deserted and its president missing.

Party president Wu Chih-yi (吳志毅), age 55, registered the party in 1989. Since then, Wu has collected money from the public in the name of the party.

Although Wu was imprisoned in 1998 for fraud and forgery, upon his release in 2000, he apparently resumed recruiting new party members. According to the report, victims were told that they could pay for membership, which came with assigned party positions that were supposedly based in China; the higher the amount paid, the more senior the position.

The price of memberships were reported to have ranged between NT$6,000 and NT$1 million.

Many of the victims of the fraud were strong pan-blue supporters including several veterans, some disabled senior citizens and a college assistant professor.

Wu was able to play to their detestation of the current government to elicit their financial support for his party.

Su said yesterday that the new bill would seek to have cancel the registration of any political party which has not nominated any candidate for an election for four consecutive years. The organization would not then be able to solicit funds as a political party and the number of such frauds would be curtailed.

"Given our lack of legislation for quality control of political parties right now, the only way to dissolve a `bubble' political party is probably through a constitutional lawsuit," said Chuang Kuo-hsiang (莊國祥), a official of the Ministry of the Interior's Civil Affairs Department.
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