Yesterday, former Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro appeared before the Lower House’s Deliberative Council on Political Ethics to explain his alleged involvement in a political funds scandal that has dogged his faction and party for the past several months, and cost him his position as leader of the LDP’s largest faction. Although charges against him have been dropped, Mr. Hashimoto requested last Wednesday (11/24/04) that the ethics committee convene to hear his testimony, apparently hoping that such a forthcoming attitude would lay things to rest.
Hashimoto’s troubles began on July 2, 2001 during a lunch with LDP members Nonaka Hiromu and Aoki Mikio and two former executives from the Japan Dental Association (JDA). It was then that Hashimoto was allegedly handed a 100 million yen check by then-JDA lobby chair Usuda Sadao and then-JDA director Uchida Hirotake. Mr. Hashimoto’s faction subsequently and deliberately concealed the donation, violating the Political Funds Control Law. The donation occurred conveniently just before the 2001 Upper House election.
Although Mr. Hashimoto has continually maintained his innocence in the matter, saying he has no memory of even meeting with JDA representatives, much less of receiving a donation from them, this defense has been progressively weakened by admissions of guilt from others involved in the case.
Both Mr. Usuda and Mr. Uchida have pled guilty to charges of illegally donating funds to Hashimoto’s faction in 2001 and are currently standing trial. Most damning however, is that just last Wednesday, Takigawa Toshiyuki, the then-treasurer of the ex-Hashimoto faction, pled guilty before a Tokyo District Court to charges of failure to declare the donation. He has also admitted to having received the check from Mr. Hashimoto, who said at the time that it was from the JDA.
Hand all but forced, Mr. Hashimoto requested to speak before the ethics council. He then promptly reversed course, telling the panel that after checking his calendar and car’s driving records, and considering the ongoing legal investigation into the matter, he now “thinks” that he “probably” did receive the check and pass it on to Takigawa as alleged.
However, he continued to repeatedly deny any involvement in the donation’s concealment, carting out the classic politician’s excuse – the hospital. In Mr. Hashimoto’s words:
I was in hospital with heart disease at that time and wasn't in any condition to make such a decision or instruct faction members. I didn't know even such a meeting was being held then. I didn't know of the faction's decision not to issue a receipt and was not informed of the decision. I depended entirely on Mr. Takigawa for the faction's fund management.
Not that the believability of any of this matters anyway. As mentioned earlier, charges against Mr. Hashimoto have already been dropped. Furthermore, the council meeting was closed and perjury was not possible under the circumstance of Mr. Hashimoto’s testimony. All that was really required of him was to simply stand there and look sorry.
For anyone who finds this difficult to believe, just consider this reaction from the chair of the Ethics Council (!), made a press conference:
I feel that Hashimoto made a sincere effort to meet his responsibility to explain the scandal.
And speaking of responsibility, it seems that Mr. Hashimoto has convinced himself that his guilt has been absolved by stepping down as faction chair, just as easily as he convinced himself that he never met with Usuda and Uchida. Again, straight from the horse’s mouth:
I've taken responsibility by quitting as the faction leader and deciding not to run in the next lower house election from a single-seat constituency… [t]here are various ways for lawmakers to take responsibility. It's my responsibility from now on to attend international conferences as a representative of the country.
What brazen shamelessness!
Does the Japanese public really want this man representing their country abroad? The cynical answer to this one is that it doesn’t matter what they want because in all likelihood they are going to be stuck with him. His magnanimous decision to not stand as a single-seat constituency candidate in the next election is meaningless because there isn’t a chance in hell that the LDP will exclude him from their candidate roster in the proportional representation constituency.
Incidentally, charges against Aoki, who is presently head of the LDP caucus in the Lower House, have been dropped, and prosecutors abandoned attempts to indict Nonaka, who retired from politics in 2003. Rather neat how it all comes together like that, no? Hashimoto, Aoki, and Nonaka get off scot-free; Usuda and Uchida are now sitting on trial; and the faction underlings take the fall.
Note: Quoted material taken from this story in the Daily Yomiuri Online Edition
# posted by Saru : 5:06 PM
