Abe eager to promote casino introduction despite scandal

January 22, 2020

Tokyo--Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his eagerness on Wednesday to go ahead with the government's plan to introduce casino-featuring integrated resorts, or IRs, in Japan, despite a bribery scandal involving a former senior official.

At the House of Representatives plenary meeting, Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Edano questioned Abe about the arrest last month of Lower House member Tsukasa Akimoto, former state minister of the Cabinet Office in charge of the IR policy, on bribery charges.

The leader of the main opposition party demanded that the government drop its IR introduction plan.

Abe said he takes the former state minister's arrest seriously, adding, however, that the government will "proceed sincerely" with the plan, "fully reflecting discussions" in the newly established casino management committee, as well as the Diet, Japan's parliament.

Edano also brought up publicly funded annual cherry blossom-viewing parties that many supporters of Abe, among celebrity and other guests, have attended in recent years.

"What's the essential difference between that and vote buying, a violation of the public offices election law?" he said.

Edano criticized the government for irregularities in handling the party's guest lists, as well as for submitting some of the guest lists to the Diet after modifying them.

"Heavy punishments should be imposed on the officials involved, including Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga," he stressed.

In response, Abe said only that Suga has instructed the Cabinet Office to take thorough measures to prevent such irregularities from occurring again.

Edano also claimed that Abe should be held responsible as the appointer of former trade minister Isshu Sugawara and former Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai, who both resigned last autumn over money scandals.

Over the recent dispatch of Self-Defense Forces troops to the Middle East, Edano objected to the government basing the dispatch on a Defense Ministry establishment law provision for SDF research activities.

Furthermore, Edano urged the government to rethink the ongoing project to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air base, currently in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to the Henoko coastal area in Nago, another Okinawa city.

"The premise that (the base's relocation to Henoko) is the only solution (to removing the danger of the Futenma base) is no longer valid," Edano said. Jiji Press