Opposition parties demand Finance Minister Aso’s resignation

April 19, 2018

Tokyo- Six Japanese opposition parties on Thursday requested that Finance Minister Taro Aso step down after his effective dismissal of the top Finance Ministry bureaucrat over sexual harassment allegations.

Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, called for Aso's resignation based on a consensus with five other opposition parties, in a meeting with Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

The meeting was held after Vice Finance Minister Junichi Fukuda tendered his resignation Wednesday over the alleged sexual harassment. A weekly magazine reported last week that Fukuda repeated sexually explicit remarks to female journalists.

The opposition side reacted sharply to Fukuda's fresh denial of the allegations Thursday morning, hours after TV Asahi Corp. said that one of its female reporters was a victim of the alleged harassment.

Later, LDP parliamentary affairs head Hiroshi Moriyama met with his CDPJ counterpart, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, to convey the LDP's rejection of the request for Aso's resignation.

At the meeting with Nikai, Fukuyama also called for summoning Tadao Yanase, former executive secretary to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for sworn testimony before the Diet, the country's parliament, over a favoritism scandal involving school operator Kake Educational Institution, headed by a friend of Abe.

Nikai told Fukuyama that he is taking the situation seriously.

Fukuyama submitted to Nikai a joint request from the six opposition parties claiming that "the government's relationship with the Diet and the public has been thrown into an abnormal situation."

The six parties demanded that the government release within April the result of an investigation into falsification of documents related to a state-owned land plot sold at a huge discount to Moritomo Gakuen, another school operator at the center of favoritism allegations against Abe.

The opposition parties also called on the government to shed full light on a suspected cover-up of daily activity logs of Self-Defense Forces troops dispatched overseas that have been recently found despite the Defense Ministry's initial denial of their existence.

The opposition parties are ready to refuse talks on Diet deliberation schedules until the LDP gives satisfactory replies to their requests.

The LDP and its coalition partner, Komeito, appear negative about accepting the opposition's demand for the summoning of Yanase, now vice minister for international affairs at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Senior Komeito official Kazuo Kitagawa told a press conference that the top priority for Aso is to continue fulfilling his responsibility as chief of his ministry in order to fully investigate its scandals and take preventive measures. Jiji Press