Ruling, opposition parties fighting over fate of finance minister

April 24, 2018

Tokyo- Opposition parties are intensifying their offensive against the government and the ruling camp, urging Finance Minister Taro Aso to step down to take responsibility for naming Junichi Fukuda, the top bureaucrat at his ministry, who is set to quit over alleged sexual harassment.

Six opposition parties, including the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Democratic Party, have been boycotting deliberations at the Diet, the country's parliament, since Friday, setting the finance chief's resignation as a condition for normalizing Diet business.

But the ruling camp, led by the Liberal Democratic Party, has been rejecting the call for the resignation of Aso, a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The ruling side sees no prospect for resuming deliberations on important bills, including legislation on work style reforms, a key policy of Abe's government.

Fukuda, vice finance minister, tendered his resignation Wednesday, saying that the confusion caused by a weekly magazine report on his suspected sexual harassment of female journalists has made it difficult for him to perform his duties, although he denied the allegation.

On Monday, the LDP, its Komeito ally and others, including opposition Nippon Ishin no Kai, held a meeting of the Audit Committee of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, without the presence of the six opposition parties.

Although the six parties took part in an executive meeting of the Rules and Administration Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, they rejected the ruling camp's proposal for holding a Lower House plenary meeting on Tuesday to discuss legislation aimed at lowering the adult age from 20 to 18 under the Civil Code.

The LDP's Keiji Furuya, chairman of the Lower House committee, decided to hold the plenary meeting Tuesday by exercising his authority, and the opposition side is set to boycott the day's deliberations.

The ruling bloc proposed rescheduling intensive debates at the budget committees of both chambers for Thursday, where Tadao Yanase, a former executive secretary to Abe, would be summoned to speak as an unsworn witness over a favoritism scandal involving school operator Kake Educational Institution, headed by a friend of the prime minister.

But the opposition parties rejected the proposal as they are demanding a sworn testimony by Yanase, now vice minister for international affairs at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Such intensive talks were initially scheduled for Monday, but were canceled since the opposition camp is boycotting Diet business.

Among other things, the opposition side is demanding that the government release within April the results of its investigation into the Finance Ministry's falsification of documents related to the controversial huge discount sale of a state-owned land plot to Moritomo Gakuen, another school operator.

"The roads of all these allegations lead to Abe," Kiyomi Tsujimoto, Diet affairs chief of the CDPJ, told reporters.

In the wake of the series of scandals, public support rates for the Abe cabinet have been plunging.

"We want to keep focusing on these scandals until the end of the ongoing regular Diet session," which is currently set to close on June 20, a senior CDPJ official said.

In response to the opposition demand for Aso's resignation, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a press conference that the government wants him to lead his ministry's efforts to regain public trust.

"We aim to restore public confidence by dealing with various issues at home and abroad and producing results," the top government spokesman said, referring to the slumping cabinet support rates. Jiji Press