Liberty Times (LT): What is the government’s response to political parties that are allegedly tainted by organized crime, instigating violence and supposedly coopted by China’s “United Front”?
Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮): Although our democracy has experienced three handovers of power and appears outwardly healthy, if we are honest, our political system is troubling.
While there are hundreds of registered political parties, only a minority actually participate in elections regularly, while the vast majority do not participate and have not done so for a long time.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
These shell parties are authorized to receive political contributions through registered accounts. In other words, they enjoy the status of political parties, but they do not operate like normal political parties.
Take the Chinese Unity Promotion Party (CUPP) as an example. It is a political party with a registered account to receive its political donations, yet it has never actually entered an election.
CUPP Chairman Chang An-le (張安樂) is known for his past involvement in organized crime — since his return from China in 2013, all of the CUPP’s key members are individuals with affiliations to gangs.
It is a part of our reality that political parties have been tainted by organized crime.
Organized crime is actively meddling in politics. It is embracing a certain ideology, organizing disruptions of public policy discourse and extending its presence to university campuses.
The government will not take this issue lightly.
Particularly, the CUPP has time and again disrupted public participation in policy discourse and it was involved in the assault on National Taiwan University students — I am very angry about it.
In the past, the police could take tough measures against organized crime under the Gangster Prevention Act (檢肅流氓條例), but the Council of Grand Justices ruled that the act was unconstitutional. As a result, the police lost many of their law enforcement capabilities.
The issue needs to be addressed by policymakers by introducing solutions for the short term and the long term.
Presently, it is necessary to thoroughly enforce three priorities [rapid response to organized crime incidents, concentration of effort against high-priority targets, and cutting off the flow of cash to crime organizations and their associates].
Shortcomings in the law should be addressed by legislative action. We should consider amending the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例) or promulgating a new act altogether.
Finally, the threat of organized crime to our democratic society should be tackled structurally, socially and economically.
LT: It seems that prosecutors cannot charge people with affiliations to organized crime who have committed violent acts during protests under the Organized Crime Prevention Act or other acts that target organized crime. What is the government’s response?
Yeh: It is clear that law enforcement should not continue the practice of dealing with specific acts of lawbreaking in isolation.
The strategy to charge offenders individually often results in failure, either because the punishment for those crimes is slight or because efforts to obtain a conviction fail altogether.
In this case, the strategy should not be focused on individual crimes, it should be viewed in the context of political parties that are allegedly affiliated with organized crime.
The financial backers of those parties should be identified and they should be held accountable for any contravention of the law and the regulations that apply to political parties. These issues are what the government is prioritizing.
I believe the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例) needs to be amended.
The act defines criminal organizations as those that conduct criminal enterprises in ways that are “structured, permanent and profit-seeking.”
Of those definitional requirements, “profit-seeking” is hard to apply to political parties with criminal ties and we should have a discourse about amending that part of the act.
Meanwhile, the law does a pretty effective job of excluding individuals with connections to organized crime from electoral politics, but similar measures need to be integrated into our regulations for civic groups and businesses, and when awarding public contracts. We need to begin the process of addressing these issues.
LT: The CUPP is alleged to have been behind many violent crimes. The Ministry of the Interior has the legal authority due to its regulation of political parties. Will the ministry impose any penalties on the CUPP?
Yeh: The Constitution states: “A political party shall be considered unconstitutional if its goals or activities endanger the existence of the Republic of China, or the nation’s free and democratic constitutional order.”
Under this article, [the ministry] could request the constitutional court of the Judicial Yuan [the Council of Grand Justices] to authorize the disbanding of a political party. The ministry is exploring this option.
However, the proposed political party act for regulating political parties is still being deliberated. The current system is based on the principle of regulating political parties as little as possible. To disband a party, the case must be brought to the constitutional court, after it is deliberated by the ministry’s Party Review Commission.
Since the laws are incomplete, our concern is that the process would go on for an indefinite length of time.
Will the Council of Grand Justices support the ministry’s demand to punish the party? How much time will the court require to make a decision?
The probelm is these questions are open-ended.
Given that the laws are not complete, we do not rule out disbanding the CUPP for violating the Constitution via the Party Review Commission, but that decision would require the Council of Grand Justices to rule in favor of it before it becomes legally valid.
This is a matter that the ministry has no control over.
LT: Have the judicial or national security organizations received any information that verifies the allegations that the Chinese government is the CUPP’s primary source of funding and that it exercises control over the party?
Yeh: The CUPP reports that it receives more than NT$2 million (US$66,057) a year. Whether it has received unreported contributions from foreign sources is a matter that only an investigation could determine.
The government is determined to identify the CUPP’s sources of funding, and our findings will be clear and definitive.
Translated by Jonathan Chin
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