On the latest Asahi “random sample” telephone poll (Dec.1-2; numbers in parenthesis from previous Nov.3-4 poll):
The online article provides the following numbers:
1. Resuming the refueling operations: necessary 44(43)%, unnecessary 44(41)%
2. Refueling resumption bill: support 36(35)%, oppose 43(43)%
3. Using the supermajority override in case the bill is voted down in the Upper House: appropriate 46%, inappropriate 37% (appears to be new question)
Hard to make sense out of the relationship between points 1 and 2. However, the battlefront appears to have moved only slightly in the face of all the stench emanating from Takemasa Moriya and defense dealer Yamada Yōkō and their environs. The article reports that 25% of those opposed to the bill found the override “appropriate”. This should give Ichiro Ozawa and his 50-strong entourage something to think about on their TGIF, weekend photo-op in Beijing (a reminder, by the way, from Chinese authorities that the Fukuda administration － the Prime Minister is due for a newly routine*, confirmative visit in January － is not the only game in town).
The headline of the article reads:
LDP, DPJ Neck-and-Neck at 32% If Lower House Proportional Seats Voting Now
Asked their preference for the go-to party for the next administration, 37% opted for the LDP while 36% chose the DPJ. But in the regular questions, support for the Fukuda administration (support 44%, not support 36%) as well as for the LDP (31%) and DPJ (23%) remained unchanged**. In any case, only 36% want an early snap election, while 55% oppose it.
The collective message from the Asahi-poll-responsive public***:
We’ve already made up our minds and we think passing the refueling bill by any means is sort of okay. In any case, it’s not that a big deal so we don’t want you guys going to the mattresses over it. (from here on, I am sort of speculating)In fact, if you have any time left after you - yes, you Mr.. Ozawa, you, Mr. Kōmura, and yes, of course you, Mr. Fukuda - pay your respects to Chinese leaders while our Diet is in session, we want you to look at more important stuff like all the time-limited tax measures that expire as of the end of this fiscal year (31 March), and for the long-term, to start talking seriously about the financial viability of the public pension and health systems and more broadly the public finances. We could go on, but you know the laundry list. A little statecraft, please; we are watching you.
* Prime Minister Abe flying to Beijing (and stopping over at Seoul) was a novelty. Prime Minister Fukuda’s trip is merely the continuation of a routine resumed, like the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. The only cloud on the horizon seems to be the disagreement over the East China Sea gas fields. I’m beginning to think that a deal can be struck, and that an agreement that keeps Chinese and Japanese nativists at bay is at least plausible. I’ll post it if I can put more focus into the particulars of a possible deal. But otherwise, don't put much meaning into the visit. Or Mr. Ozawa's.
** These numbers do support my contention that the LDP and DPJ own a third and one-fourth/fifth respectively and are fighting it out for the floater one-third.The New Kōmeitō, the Japan Communist Party and the micros account for the remainder of the committed electorate.
*** Don’t you wish that all the media polls asked the same questions so that we could compare them? That could make way for a whole slew of controlled test.
Showing posts with label Yamada Yōkō scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yamada Yōkō scandal. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Sunday, December 02, 2007
The DPJ Is Not Going to Summon Naoki Akiyama
Sunday Project, the Old Faithful of political talk shows, produced the Diet affairs committee chairmen from each of the parties*. Most of the talk revolved around the botched attempt at summoning Finance Minister Fukushirō Nukaga to testify under oath. The DPJ chairman gave the following reasons for giving up:
1) Takemasa Moriya, the disgraced MOD ex-Administrative Vice-Minister**, was arrested, making a joint appearance of the two in front of the Upper House Financial Affairs Committee impossible. The DPJ Chairman strongly and repeatedly suggested that the arrest was a plot to avoid the summons.
2) The Japan Communist Party changed its mind***, the People’s New Party also insisted on unanimity, and the DPJ wanted to avoid the public impression that it was conducting a one-party vendetta.****
All the opposition parties claimed that they still wanted the two to testify once Mr. Moriya got out, though short of corroborating evidence, it was hard to see how they would be able to justify this inconsequential “poking at the corners of the multi-tiered meal box” at the tax payers’ expense. It appeared that they intended to blame the second blow-off on the LDP and New Kōmeitō.
The Communist Party chairman managed to throw in some fresh meat by way of allegations of mass corruption, which it hoped to verify by going after Naoki Akiyama, the obscure but reputedly powerful executive director of the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange*****, an institution that brings together on its board of directors many defense tribe Diet members, mainly LDP, but also a couple of independents (thrown out of the LDP for playing Post Office), and one each from the New Kōmeitō, the DPJ, and the People’s New Party. The Communist Party chairman raised allegations in the Asahi and Yomiuri of a 60 million yen slush fund transfer****** from Yamada Yōkō’s U.S. subsidiary******* to the U.S.-Japan Center. The DPJ chairman bravely criticized the Center, but curtly dismissed any prospects for summoning Mr. Akiyama for questioning, given presumed LDP intransigence. He also stated his view that the fix was in and that this whole affair would end with Mr. Moriya and Mr. Moriya only taking a fall********.
I’m not yet sure what to make of all this; all I can say is that the shakaibu(society********* section) reporters are still giving the politics section reporters a good run for the money, which I think means that the public prosecutors are feeding this constituency of theirs. However, I still don’t see a convincing reason to change my call on the refueling bill and its aftereffects, given the DPJ’s apparent reluctance to go after the angle taken up by the Communist Party.
* New Party Nippon was missing, but it only has one Diet seat (in the Upper House) and has formed an official party group jointly with the DPJ and one other nano-party. The individual chairmen’s names have been omitted on this blog because they are irrelevant.
** Allow me to take note of the unintended pun in “vice-minister”.
*** Party HQ reminded its field officers that the Communist Party had been on the short end of this stick before.
**** The Social Democrats, now reduced to near-micro party status, are not represented on the Financial Affairs Committee; and the New Party Nippon is a one-seat nano-party that is part of an official Upper House party grouping.
***** The information on the website is almost exclusively in Japanese only. My guess is that the web site is there mainly to satisfy disclosure requirements as a recipient of public funds.
****** 100 million according to the Yomiuri. The Asahi report, which has 40 million going to Mr. Miyazaki, the ex-Yamada Yōkō executive who broke off in a business dispute to set up Nihon Mirise, appears to be more reliable.
******* This allegation brings the case under the reach of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, without prejudice to the ultimate outcome. According to the Yomiuri report, Mr. Akiyama denied receiving such funds.
******** At this point, the oldest host of a Japanese news show Sōichirō Tawara was not seen to put his chin in his hands, smile winsomely and say, “Do tell”.
********* No, not that kind of “society”.
1) Takemasa Moriya, the disgraced MOD ex-Administrative Vice-Minister**, was arrested, making a joint appearance of the two in front of the Upper House Financial Affairs Committee impossible. The DPJ Chairman strongly and repeatedly suggested that the arrest was a plot to avoid the summons.
2) The Japan Communist Party changed its mind***, the People’s New Party also insisted on unanimity, and the DPJ wanted to avoid the public impression that it was conducting a one-party vendetta.****
All the opposition parties claimed that they still wanted the two to testify once Mr. Moriya got out, though short of corroborating evidence, it was hard to see how they would be able to justify this inconsequential “poking at the corners of the multi-tiered meal box” at the tax payers’ expense. It appeared that they intended to blame the second blow-off on the LDP and New Kōmeitō.
The Communist Party chairman managed to throw in some fresh meat by way of allegations of mass corruption, which it hoped to verify by going after Naoki Akiyama, the obscure but reputedly powerful executive director of the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange*****, an institution that brings together on its board of directors many defense tribe Diet members, mainly LDP, but also a couple of independents (thrown out of the LDP for playing Post Office), and one each from the New Kōmeitō, the DPJ, and the People’s New Party. The Communist Party chairman raised allegations in the Asahi and Yomiuri of a 60 million yen slush fund transfer****** from Yamada Yōkō’s U.S. subsidiary******* to the U.S.-Japan Center. The DPJ chairman bravely criticized the Center, but curtly dismissed any prospects for summoning Mr. Akiyama for questioning, given presumed LDP intransigence. He also stated his view that the fix was in and that this whole affair would end with Mr. Moriya and Mr. Moriya only taking a fall********.
I’m not yet sure what to make of all this; all I can say is that the shakaibu(society********* section) reporters are still giving the politics section reporters a good run for the money, which I think means that the public prosecutors are feeding this constituency of theirs. However, I still don’t see a convincing reason to change my call on the refueling bill and its aftereffects, given the DPJ’s apparent reluctance to go after the angle taken up by the Communist Party.
* New Party Nippon was missing, but it only has one Diet seat (in the Upper House) and has formed an official party group jointly with the DPJ and one other nano-party. The individual chairmen’s names have been omitted on this blog because they are irrelevant.
** Allow me to take note of the unintended pun in “vice-minister”.
*** Party HQ reminded its field officers that the Communist Party had been on the short end of this stick before.
**** The Social Democrats, now reduced to near-micro party status, are not represented on the Financial Affairs Committee; and the New Party Nippon is a one-seat nano-party that is part of an official Upper House party grouping.
***** The information on the website is almost exclusively in Japanese only. My guess is that the web site is there mainly to satisfy disclosure requirements as a recipient of public funds.
****** 100 million according to the Yomiuri. The Asahi report, which has 40 million going to Mr. Miyazaki, the ex-Yamada Yōkō executive who broke off in a business dispute to set up Nihon Mirise, appears to be more reliable.
******* This allegation brings the case under the reach of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, without prejudice to the ultimate outcome. According to the Yomiuri report, Mr. Akiyama denied receiving such funds.
******** At this point, the oldest host of a Japanese news show Sōichirō Tawara was not seen to put his chin in his hands, smile winsomely and say, “Do tell”.
********* No, not that kind of “society”.
Friday, November 23, 2007
DPJ Hopes Finance Minister Nukaga Comes Through for Them
Prime Minister wannabe Fukushirō Nukaga is a former Defense Minister (when MOD was still the Self-Defense Agency) and member in good standing of the Japanese defense community. He is now Minister of Finance, a diminished but still powerful portfolio, in the Fukuda Cabinet. He also plays golf, and eats out. All this has brought him – merely allegedly in one case – into the company of Yamada Yōkō and the people embroiled in the MOD scandals. The thinking of the DPJ is that if they can bring this Cabinet member down, they will be able to sink the refueling bill, the Fukuda Cabinet, and the LDP in a snap election forced by an Upper House censure vote.
Mr. Nukaga entered the picture when Takemasa Moriya, the now-disgraced former MOD Administrative Vice-Minister, testified in the Diet under oath that he went to a dinner held for James Auer, a former military intelligence officer, Pentagon official and prominent Japan hand, and that Mr. Nukaga (and the hospitalized ex-MOD Minister Fumio Kyuma) was there as well as Motonobu Miyazaki (CEO of Yamada Yōkō split-off Nihon Mirise), the main character of this saga and now criminal suspect. Mr. Nukaga, Mr. Miyazaki, and, most importantly, Mr. Auer have all denied attending the said dinner*. By his own account, Mr. Nukaga has known Mr. Miyazaki for several years, once received him in his Diet office, and once played golf with him (and paid 20,000 yen out of his own pocket) at a golf club affiliated with Yamada Yōkō.
Between 2002 and 2007, Mr. Nukaga sold 2.2 million yen worth of fund raising party tickets to Yamada Yōkō, all of which he returned after the scandals broke. He has denied receiving any political funds in the form of donations. He also received 200,000 yen as part of the invitation to the wedding of the daughter of the Yamada Yōkō owner – he has not been personally implicated in the scandal – and sent in his stead his wife, who gave the same amount as a wedding gift.
These Yamada Yōkō/Miyazaki related revelations have created considerable embarrassment for Mr. Nukaga. However, all of them, to the extent admitted by Mr. Nukaga, as well as the alleged dinner honoring Mr. Auer, are par for the course for a politician of Mr. Nukaga’s background. It is only with hindsight that they have become a matter of interest for the DPJ and the media. Likewise his links to the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange and its executive director Naoki Akiyama (again, golf). So far, the DPJ has turned up more smoke and mirrors than smoking gun.
More troublesome for the Finance Minister is the latest allegation, this time coming from Nobumasa Ōta, a former JSDA fast-track official. According to Mr. Ōta, in 2003, when he was the head of the Sendai branch of the Defense Facilities Administration Agency, Mr. Nukaga applied pressure through Mr. Moriya to include a Sendai construction company in the list of eligible bidders at the branch. Mr. Ōta’s background lends a measure of instant credibility to his charge. Even if his allegations are true, they would still likely fall short of a criminal indictment** of a sitting Cabinet Minister and defense establishment member, a turn of events that would be as good or better than what I believed to be the minimum necessary for stopping the OEF-MIO refueling resumption bill. However, it will not require a criminal indictment to force Mr. Nukaga’s resignation and discredit the LDP and the Fukuda administration, which, for electoral and internal reasons, is vastly more beneficial to the DPJ than taking down the refueling bill. Influence peddling is something that anyone can understand and rally against.
But what are the chances of Mr. Ōta’s charges sticking? In my view slim, not least because everybody, including the official who allegedly told Mr. Ōta of the pressure through Mr. Moriya, are denying that it ever happened. So, unless Mr. Ōta or the DPJ comes up with independent corroborating information, the matter will remain a case of he hearsays/they say. In which case, Mr. Nukaga and the Fukuda administration will weather this attack – if not without being a little diminished, since there is no way that Mr. Ōta will retract his allegations.***. Still, the issue bears watching, because the DPJ may just have something up its sleeve.
*It is somewhat mystifying to me that the DPJ continues to bark up this particular tree. I see no plausible reason for these people to need to lie about this particular allegation. Is someone leading the DPJ, once again, on a wild goose chase? What does Seji Maehara think?
** You are warned that I’m writing this down without doing the usual fact-checking. Specifically, I’d have to hit the casebooks to be sure that Mr. Nukaga’s alleged action does not constitute an exercise of his authority as Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time. There are also statute of limitation considerations that turn on the existence of specific quid pro quo for the alleged action, which in turn entails questions of fact that I can only speculate about.
*** Mr. Ōta does have some substantial downside, including, most importantly in the eyes of the public, the fact that he ran for an Upper House seat in 2004 (but not 2007) as a DPJ candidate. The LDP will play on that and other matters around Mr. Ōta. A smear campaign? The pox-on-all-houses tabloid media will do that for them. But this will definitely not hurt Mr. Ōta’s career as a freewheeling talking head and blogger extraordinaire and indefatigable chatroom operator.
Mr. Nukaga entered the picture when Takemasa Moriya, the now-disgraced former MOD Administrative Vice-Minister, testified in the Diet under oath that he went to a dinner held for James Auer, a former military intelligence officer, Pentagon official and prominent Japan hand, and that Mr. Nukaga (and the hospitalized ex-MOD Minister Fumio Kyuma) was there as well as Motonobu Miyazaki (CEO of Yamada Yōkō split-off Nihon Mirise), the main character of this saga and now criminal suspect. Mr. Nukaga, Mr. Miyazaki, and, most importantly, Mr. Auer have all denied attending the said dinner*. By his own account, Mr. Nukaga has known Mr. Miyazaki for several years, once received him in his Diet office, and once played golf with him (and paid 20,000 yen out of his own pocket) at a golf club affiliated with Yamada Yōkō.
Between 2002 and 2007, Mr. Nukaga sold 2.2 million yen worth of fund raising party tickets to Yamada Yōkō, all of which he returned after the scandals broke. He has denied receiving any political funds in the form of donations. He also received 200,000 yen as part of the invitation to the wedding of the daughter of the Yamada Yōkō owner – he has not been personally implicated in the scandal – and sent in his stead his wife, who gave the same amount as a wedding gift.
These Yamada Yōkō/Miyazaki related revelations have created considerable embarrassment for Mr. Nukaga. However, all of them, to the extent admitted by Mr. Nukaga, as well as the alleged dinner honoring Mr. Auer, are par for the course for a politician of Mr. Nukaga’s background. It is only with hindsight that they have become a matter of interest for the DPJ and the media. Likewise his links to the Japan-U.S. Center for Peace and Cultural Exchange and its executive director Naoki Akiyama (again, golf). So far, the DPJ has turned up more smoke and mirrors than smoking gun.
More troublesome for the Finance Minister is the latest allegation, this time coming from Nobumasa Ōta, a former JSDA fast-track official. According to Mr. Ōta, in 2003, when he was the head of the Sendai branch of the Defense Facilities Administration Agency, Mr. Nukaga applied pressure through Mr. Moriya to include a Sendai construction company in the list of eligible bidders at the branch. Mr. Ōta’s background lends a measure of instant credibility to his charge. Even if his allegations are true, they would still likely fall short of a criminal indictment** of a sitting Cabinet Minister and defense establishment member, a turn of events that would be as good or better than what I believed to be the minimum necessary for stopping the OEF-MIO refueling resumption bill. However, it will not require a criminal indictment to force Mr. Nukaga’s resignation and discredit the LDP and the Fukuda administration, which, for electoral and internal reasons, is vastly more beneficial to the DPJ than taking down the refueling bill. Influence peddling is something that anyone can understand and rally against.
But what are the chances of Mr. Ōta’s charges sticking? In my view slim, not least because everybody, including the official who allegedly told Mr. Ōta of the pressure through Mr. Moriya, are denying that it ever happened. So, unless Mr. Ōta or the DPJ comes up with independent corroborating information, the matter will remain a case of he hearsays/they say. In which case, Mr. Nukaga and the Fukuda administration will weather this attack – if not without being a little diminished, since there is no way that Mr. Ōta will retract his allegations.***. Still, the issue bears watching, because the DPJ may just have something up its sleeve.
*It is somewhat mystifying to me that the DPJ continues to bark up this particular tree. I see no plausible reason for these people to need to lie about this particular allegation. Is someone leading the DPJ, once again, on a wild goose chase? What does Seji Maehara think?
** You are warned that I’m writing this down without doing the usual fact-checking. Specifically, I’d have to hit the casebooks to be sure that Mr. Nukaga’s alleged action does not constitute an exercise of his authority as Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time. There are also statute of limitation considerations that turn on the existence of specific quid pro quo for the alleged action, which in turn entails questions of fact that I can only speculate about.
*** Mr. Ōta does have some substantial downside, including, most importantly in the eyes of the public, the fact that he ran for an Upper House seat in 2004 (but not 2007) as a DPJ candidate. The LDP will play on that and other matters around Mr. Ōta. A smear campaign? The pox-on-all-houses tabloid media will do that for them. But this will definitely not hurt Mr. Ōta’s career as a freewheeling talking head and blogger extraordinaire and indefatigable chatroom operator.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The Tokyo Special Investigations Department Has Gone into Action on the Yamada Yōkō Affair
To a Japanese public used to watching beleaguered CEOs, politicians, and top bureaucrats scurrying away from persistent TV reporters and their camera crews, it must have been a refreshing sight to see a calmly serious Takemasa Moriya in his civvies, holding an impromptu news conference in front of his doorsteps. Not that he appeared to be very forthcoming in the snippets that I caught, as he begged off, stating that he was being questioned by the Defense Ministry. I went to bed, thinking that Defense Minister Ishiba better get hold of Donald Rumsfeld's interrogation manual, get to the bottom of things, then do everything in his power to set things right. Mr. Moriya was sure to be grilled in the Diet, and it is usually the case that the conclusions of 'internal investigations' invariably fall apart in the light of serious third-party scrutiny. You don't want to be caught between lame excuses and harsh realities, nor do you want to cede the initiative to the opposition. And Prime Minister Fukuda should start showing face himself if he wants to salvage the refueling operations and shore up long-term prospects for his administration.
And then I get up, go out, pick up the morning paper, and the front page is emblazoned with the headline:
Yamada Yōkō's US Subsidiary Investigated
Yomiuri has found out that the Public Prosecutors Office has been receiving judicial assistance from US authorities in investigating the US subsidiary for accounting irregularities. According to the report (citing multiple Yamada Yōkō sources) a former head of the US subsidiary built a multimillion dollar slush fund, some of which the sources suspect was used to entertain JSDA officials visiting the US as well as US vendors. The former US subsidiary head was a close associate of the former Yamada Yōkō executive who had treated Mr. Moriya to golf and meals excursions, and was one of the people who joined hands with him to form Nihon Mirise. Ominously, the Special Investigations Department of the Tokyo Local Public Prosecutors Office is in charge of the case. This particular Special Investigations Department (Osaka and, since 1996, Nagoya have one each as well) handles most major economic and political crime investigations, as well as large tax evasion cases.
At a minimum, this guarantees that the issue will be in the public eye for the duration of this Diet session. I think that the chances of the Fukuda administration retaking the initiative on the refueling extension bill have diminished substantially.
Incidentally, running alongside this story on the same front page is yet another revelation (not yet online) in an ongoing medical scandal, where a pharmaceutical company and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has failed to act on information that could have led to early treatment for victims of drug-induced hepatitis. This falls on the shoulders of Yoichi Masuzoe, the MHLW Minister who is already charged with cleaning up the public pension records.
When it pours, it pours.
And then I get up, go out, pick up the morning paper, and the front page is emblazoned with the headline:
Yamada Yōkō's US Subsidiary Investigated
Yomiuri has found out that the Public Prosecutors Office has been receiving judicial assistance from US authorities in investigating the US subsidiary for accounting irregularities. According to the report (citing multiple Yamada Yōkō sources) a former head of the US subsidiary built a multimillion dollar slush fund, some of which the sources suspect was used to entertain JSDA officials visiting the US as well as US vendors. The former US subsidiary head was a close associate of the former Yamada Yōkō executive who had treated Mr. Moriya to golf and meals excursions, and was one of the people who joined hands with him to form Nihon Mirise. Ominously, the Special Investigations Department of the Tokyo Local Public Prosecutors Office is in charge of the case. This particular Special Investigations Department (Osaka and, since 1996, Nagoya have one each as well) handles most major economic and political crime investigations, as well as large tax evasion cases.
At a minimum, this guarantees that the issue will be in the public eye for the duration of this Diet session. I think that the chances of the Fukuda administration retaking the initiative on the refueling extension bill have diminished substantially.
Incidentally, running alongside this story on the same front page is yet another revelation (not yet online) in an ongoing medical scandal, where a pharmaceutical company and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has failed to act on information that could have led to early treatment for victims of drug-induced hepatitis. This falls on the shoulders of Yoichi Masuzoe, the MHLW Minister who is already charged with cleaning up the public pension records.
When it pours, it pours.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)