For the first time in ages, The Asahi Shimbun on Feb. 1 printed a table of data that ran almost the full length of a page, from top to bottom.
It was a breakdown of an amended version of a political funds income and expenditure report of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Abe faction.
As a general rule, I do not believe in publicizing the trouble someone went through to make a point. But this is a special case, and I want everyone to know how hard my colleagues worked together to compile that table. They had to race against the clock to meet the deadline while poring through pages of documents to enumerate the data.
This had to be done because, in the first place, the “disclosure” made by the Abe faction was only one page long.
All it said was that the faction had failed to report a total of about 670 million yen over the last five years. There was no mention whatsoever of when, or how much, or who among the lawmakers were asked to funnel their fundraiser party revenues into the slush fund.
The words on that sheet of paper--“We apologize from the bottom of our hearts”--could not be more insincere.
Among the names listed on the table compiled by my colleagues based on the revised political funding reports submitted to the government, I noticed that of an Abe faction member who once criticized the “sloppy accounting” by researchers spending the government’s scientific research funding. I also saw the name of someone who has repeatedly preached “morality.”
And yet, the Abe faction has never really explained how it spends money, and senior faction members continue to refuse to talk to the public.
For the stated purpose of clarifying the situation, the LDP on Feb. 2 started interviewing the lawmakers concerned. Yet, the party reportedly keeps objecting every time an opposition party says “slush fund” in the Diet.
But the objection has no leg to stand on. The LDP has not disclosed the flow of political funds in 2018 and 2019, which effectively points to the existence of a slush fund.
Every political funds income and expenditure report is required to be accompanied by an affidavit that says to the effect that everything on the report is true and correct. But in the amended report, the affidavit was crossed out with an X mark.
Should the Abe faction attempt to weasel its way out, the public may well give the LDP a decisively bad rating.
After all, the pen is in the hands of the people.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 3
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*Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.