Opposition bloc demands testimony of Abe wife on land deal

November 26, 2017

Tokyo- Opposition party policy leaders demanded Sunday that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife, Akie, testify in parliament over a controversial discount sale of state land to a school operator once linked to her.

But an official of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party was cautious about summoning the first lady to parliament as a witness.

The controversial deal involved the sale last year of a state-owned land plot in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, western Japan, to Moritomo Gakuen for 134 million yen, at a steep discount of more than 80 pct, in view of the costs to remove buried waste. Akie Abe was once named honorary principal of an elementary school planned to be constructed at the site.

The opposition request in a television debate came after the Board of Audit of Japan said in a report on Wednesday that it could not find any convincing data for estimating the amount of the waste.

In the debate, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party demanded testimony by related people, including Akie Abe.

"I want to know the intentions and background behind the Finance Ministry's decision" to make such a "dangerous" deal, said Akira Nagatsuma, deputy leader and policy chief of the CDPJ. "It's natural to think that the ministry surmised the wishes of many people including those in the prime minister's office," he said.

The ministry manages state-owned land and other assets.

Nagatsuma suggested that his party will grill the prime minister in the parliamentary committee meetings from Monday.

Akira Kasai, policy chief of the JCP, said, "Suspicion has ever been deepening."

Akihisa Nagashima, policy chief of the Party of Hope, called attention to the revelation that most records of the negotiations with the school operator are not kept in the government and criticized it as an "unprecedented" blunder. Jiji Press