On Wednesday morning, a bill to revise the Political Funds Control Act was debated during a plenary session of the House of Councilors.
14:18 JST, June 19, 2024
Tokyo (Jiji Press) – The Diet, Japan’s parliament, on Wednesday approved a bill submitted by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to revise the law on the control of political funds in the wake of Japan’s ‘slush fund’ scandal the party.
The bill was approved that day during the plenary meeting of the House of Councilors, the Upper House of the Diet, with the support of the LDP and its coalition partner Komeito.
Opposition parties, including the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party), voted against the bill.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is also chairman of the LDP, hopes that the bill’s enactment will be a milestone in political reforms after the LDP scandal, which is the focus of the second half of the ongoing regular parliamentary session until Sunday. and will help restore public confidence.
However, opposition parties claimed that the LDP bill contained many “loopholes” and left many issues for further consideration.
Later on Wednesday, a parliamentary debate will take place between party leaders for the first time in three years. The CDP is poised to next table a motion of no confidence against the Kishida cabinet, calling on the prime minister to dissolve the House of Representatives, the all-important lower house of parliament, for a general election.
The revised law will introduce a debt-by-association system to suspend lawmakers’ civil rights if their treasurers are punished for failing to include some funds in their political fund reports and lawmakers fail to properly audit the reports.
The minimum purchase amount per fundraising event for disclosing ticket buyer information will also be reduced from over ¥200,000 to over ¥50,000.
Meanwhile, an outside organization will be set up to monitor how lawmakers use the so-called policy activity funds they receive from their parties. Receipts for expenditures from the funds will be made public after ten years, as demanded by Nippon Ishin. But the details of both measures will be discussed later between the ruling and opposition camps.
The revised law, which will enter into force on January 1, 2026, does not include, except for a few parts, a ban on political donations by companies and organizations and the abolition of the policy activity funds, both of which were demanded by the opposition.
Nippon Ishin supported the LDP bill in the Lower House, following an agreement late last month between its leader, Nobuyuki Baba, and Kishida. However, in the Senate, the party turned against the bill and even filed a motion of censure against Kishida, after the LDP decided during the current parliamentary session to skip a law revision to reduce the so-called research, public relations and housing allowances for lawmakers, an item included in the agreement.
