KYODO NEWS VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, answers a question from Yukio Edano, second from bottom, of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, at a reduced space budget committee meeting in Tokyo on Friday. Kishida and several key cabinet ministers were questioned by the opposition. lawmakers in parliament on Friday over an unfolding fundraising scandal and his alleged ties to the Unification Church, which threaten to further damage his government’s waning popularity.
TOKYO >> Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and several key ministers spoke Friday to opposition lawmakers in parliament about an unfolding fundraising scandal and an alleged link to the Unification Church that threatens to further curb the government’s declining popularity.
Support for Kishida’s government has fallen below 30% due to public discontent over his slow reaction to emerging costs and lagging wages, and the scandal may weaken his grip on power within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. However, the long-ruling party remains the voters’ favorite in media polls due to fragmented and weak opposition.
Dozens of ruling lawmakers, as well as Cabinet members, are accused of failing to fully claim the money they earned from the fundraiser. Kishida said the government was investigating the scandal following a complaint by a criminal.
The party’s largest and toughest faction, connected to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is suspected of failing to claim more than one hundred million yen ($690,000) in funds, an imaginable violation of election and voting laws, according to reports from the media. it was allegedly paid into unsupervised slush funds.
Kishida asked members to temporarily halt fundraising. “This is a first step,” he said Friday. We will fully understand the riots and their motives and take steps to regain the public’s trust. “
Kishida also said he would step down as head of his own party while prime minister, in a bid to show his determination to tackle these issues.
Kishida was bombarded with questions from senior opposition lawmakers about the scandals during Friday’s parliamentary hearing.
He also faces allegations similar to a 2019 assembly with former U. S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who visited with senior officials of the Unification Church, a South Korea-based devout organization that the government must dissolve because of abusive recruitment and fundraising tactics that have surfaced during an investigation into Abe’s assassination last year.
The investigation also led to revelations of years of cozy ties between the governing party and the Unification Church.
Kishida said he was asked to meet with Gingrich as a former foreign minister and not with the other guests. Photographs published in Japanese media show him exchanging business cards with Unification Church officials.
“I don’t see any challenge in that,” Kishida said. “If there were other people in the group with ties to the church, that doesn’t mean I had ties to the Unification Church. “
Yukio Edano, a lawmaker for the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, accused Kishida of lax oversight and of attempting to distance himself from the fundraising scandal by withdrawing from leadership of his faction.
Media reports allege that Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno has diverted more than 10 million yen ($69,000) over the past five years from the cash he collected on holiday occasions to a slush fund. Matsuno was a senior official in Abe’s faction from 2019 to 2021 and is the key prime minister named in the scandal.
Matsuno shrugged off repeated questions from journalists and opposition lawmakers about the allegation, saying he may not comment now because the matter is being investigated by the government and its faction reviewing its accounts.
Public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday that two members of Abe’s faction also allegedly earned 10 million yen ($69,000) in undeclared funds.
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