Abe Clarifies Intention to Retain Aso as Finance Minister

June 5, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday that he has no plans to dismiss Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso over the manipulation of documents by the Ministry of Finance in a high-profile cronyism scandal.

"Official documents must not be falsified. As the head of government, I deeply feel responsible," Abe told reporters after the MOF released the same day an investigation report on the tampering of the documents related to the huge discount sale of a state land lot to school operator Moritomo Gakuen, once linked to his wife, Akie.

"I want Deputy Prime Minister Aso to fulfill his duties by leading the work" on thoroughly reviewing how official documents should be managed and preventing similar misconduct, Abe stressed.

Aso told a press conference the same day that he is not thinking about whether to resign over the scandal while announcing that he will voluntarily return his compensation for 12 months.

Opposition parties are poised to continue to demand Aso's resignation.

"It's an unprecedented scandal in which the parliament and the public have been deceived," Democratic Party for the People coleader Yuichiro Tamaki told a news conference on the day. "The entire cabinet should resign," he argued.

Kiyomi Tsujimoto, parliamentary affairs chief of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, said that both Abe and Aso should resign, noting that the MOF has failed to give a satisfactory explanation about why the document manipulation took place.

At a meeting of their parliamentary affairs heads on Monday, the CDPJ and other opposition parties reaffirmed that they will continue to demand sworn testimony at the parliament by Akie Abe and Nobuhisa Sagawa, who was serving as head of the MOF Financial Bureau when the documents were tampered. Jiji Press