DEMOCRATIC party fund raising in a Buddhist temple in California where the monks have a vow of poverty and a donation from a relation of Mahatma Gandhi are being exposed in a bizarre story of how the affluent Asian American community is helping to get President Clinton re-elected.
The latest revelations come on top of an expose in the US media of how the wealthy Indonesian banking Riady family may have been discreetly channelling hundreds of thousands of dollars into Democratic party coffers. The Republican Party is now charging that these contributions influenced a change in policy by the Clinton administration on the question of human rights abuses by Indonesia, which illegally annexed East Timor in 1976.
An embarrassed White House denies the charge but has had to admit that a $250,000 contribution from a mysterious South Korean company in California was illegal and that the Buddhist temple fund raiser attended by Vice President Al Gore should not have been used for this purpose by the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The hard pressed Republican campaign has seized on the allegations with Mr Dole telling a meeting in California that "these people are so shameless and power hungry, they'll do anything to win". He sneered at the Buddhist temple fund raiser where "the vice president showed up and ate vegetables.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Newt Gingrich, has announced that there will be a Congressional investigation early next year into the Clinton administration's ties with the Indonesian Lippo banking conglomerate controlled by the Riady family. He said that the Congressional hearings from next January will be "the opening phase of what will turn out to be the largest presidential scandal in American history".
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Mr Yogesh Gandhi, a distant relative of Mahatma, gave $325,000 to the Democrats last May after presenting President Clinton with the Gandhi World Peace Award. The donation was solicited by a Clinton campaign fund raiser, Mr John Huang.
Mr Huang is also at the centre of other allegations. He is an American naturalised Chinese who has been a full time staff member of the DNC since last December raising millions of dollars from wealthy Asian American. He organised the temple fund raiser.
Some $140,000 was raised on April 29th at the temple which is said to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Mr Man Ho, the assistant to the temple abbess, Ms Su-Jen Wu, who is in Taiwan, said that temple funds did not contribute to the Democratic campaign but the abbess donated $5,000 she had earned in Taiwan.
Mr Huang, who worked at the Department of Commerce from July 1994, is said to have raised as much as $4 million for the Democratic Party this year.
Under US law, legally resident foreigner and foreign companies can make political contributions as long as the money comes, from inside the country and is not merely channelled from outside.
Mr Huang has had close contacts with the Indonesian Lippo group, whose US operations he ran for several years. Mr James Riady son of the Lippo founder at one time lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he met then Governor Clinton and ran the local Lippo owned bank.
Following revelations in the Los Angeles Times this week about involvement of the Jakarta based Lippo group in Democratic fund raising, closer attention is being paid to the change of policy by the Clinton administration towards human rights abuses in Indonesia and East Timor.
The 1992 US threat to impose trade sanctions on Indonesia because of suppression of workers' rights there was dropped in 1994 by the then US Trade Representative, Mr Mickey Kantor, but officials strongly deny that this decision had anything to do with the Lippo group contacts with President Clinton.