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”.
Showing posts with label Takemasa Moriya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Takemasa Moriya. Show all posts
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Finance Minister Nukaga Seems to Be in the Clear and the Refueling Bill Continues on Course for a Supermajority Override
When even the Asahi says (English translation available tomorrow) that forcing Fukushirō Nukaga, the LDP “defense tribe” member and current Finance Minister, to testify under oath in the Upper House is a bad idea, well then, it is a bad idea. The lack of a plausible motive for dissembling about a dinner in honor of James Auer should have set off warning signs in the minds of DPJ leaders. Now, Mr. Nukaga has provided a relatively secure alibi for his presence elsewhere during the said dinner, as well as five of the eight people (not including a hypothetical Mr. Nukaga) corroborating his absence. As if that were not enough, Takemasa Moriya, who gave two extraordinary Yomiuri interviews for a total of seven hours on the 14th and 24th, stated:
“I kept saying, ‘(My memories) may be wrong,’ ‘I don’t want to cause inconvenience.’ But since they insisted, ‘Talk’… (Finance Minister Nukaga, etc. [ed. Akio Kyūma])) said, ‘I didn’t go’, I then became worried that I could have been mistaken.
The public had been led to believe that the DPJ had corroborating testimony on its side. Now, it turns out that what it had all along was a seating diagram and other bits of information coaxed out of Mr. Moriya himself, whose memory appears to be a few megabytes short of my PC. This is not on the order of the fake email that took down then DPJ leader Seiji Maehara, but it will be an embarrassment at best for the DPJ.
One plausible explanation for the DPJ’s continued insistence that Mr. Nukaga be called to testify on 3 December (it claims to want to question Mr. Moriya separately as part of the UH committee proceedings, in jail after he is arrested later today) is that they want to delay deliberations on the refueling bill as much as possible, partly to force the LDP to extend the current Diet session for another 30 days or so, partly because they want as much time as possible to get their own act together on their own ineffectual proposal. I have been surprised that the DPJ does not appear to be going after the allegations of potential influence peddling by Mr. Nukaga coming from Nobumasa Ōta. Perhaps it has good reasons to avoid its 2004 UH candidate Mr. Ōta, whom they pointedly did not endorse for a second try this year. I am also mystified as to why they are not throwing all their resources at attacking the overall procurement process, given the spread of corruption charges beyond the Defense Facilities Administration Agency scandals (2006) that left the MOD itself relatively untouched. Perhaps the DPJ does have something up its sleeve to spring on the unsuspecting LDP － say give names of LDP politicians who were on the take list at Yamada Yōkō and could be shown to have reciprocated with pressure on the bureaucracy － in which case they’re doing a very good job of hiding it*. Barring such surprises though, insisting on questioning Mr. Nukaga is a losing proposition, from which only LDP intransigence that would allow the DPJ to claim they are being forced to give it up so that the business of statecraft can go on can give them a face-saving out.
But so far, this is a mere sideshow blown up to unwarranted proportions. The broader issue of military procurement reform is in the capable hands of Nobutaka Machimura Chief Cabinet Secretary, though the formidable defense otaku and Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba will surely play a major role in the process. The DPJ needs to play a critical, but constructive, role here if it is to be seen as the reasonable, responsible party capable of taking the reins from the ruling coalition.
As for the main event politically, that is, the refueling bill, my assessment here remains unchanged, that a supermajority override and a motion of some kind, more specifically a censure vote, is a done deal; unless, of course, the opposition loses its nerve and forgoes the motion. After all, there will be few, if any, better occasions for the Fukuda administration to test the waters of supermajority override than a measure that has a modest majority or a sizable plurality (depending on which poll you believe) of support among a relatively informed and also relatively indifferent public. That way, you can avoid any risk of setting off an unforeseen catastrophe that would － admittedly in the most implausible of circumstances － force the Prime Minister to call a snap election** that the ruling coalition is sure to lose. And pulled off successfully, like most things, it will be easier the second time around and beyond.
*There’s potential blowback at Ichiro Ozawa, who received from Yamada Yōkō (and has now returned) almost three times as much political funds than Mr. Nukaga did. This is reminiscent of the political financing reporting controversy, which, among other things, revealed a string Mr. Ozawa’s real estate acquisitions with political funds, as well as a resurrection of the mysterious transfer of funds to Mr. Ozawa’s political coffers just before his Liberal Party was merged into the DPJ (2003), as I posted here. Having someone who embodies the old-school LDP at the helm has a downside.
**There is some talk from the LDP, some of them in positions of responsibility, about an early snap election following a censure motion. I have no access to those people, but I think that they are blowing smoke. The public will not like being asked for a new four-year mandate on the basis of a difference of opinion on a matter as esoteric and other-worldly as “right thing to do” around the Afghan war zone, so the chances of losing the two-thirds majority will be even higher. Mr. Ozawa would exit the scene, since there is little chance of the DPJ winning more seats than the LDP (the new, lower bar of success for the DPJ), but that would be a mixed blessing, and far from the clear upside that the LDP needs to justify taking a plunge.
Then what is the purpose of all the talk? Some of it could be genuine fear that public opinion might turn against them if they exercise the supermajority. But I doubt it, given the peripheral nature of the issue to the real concerns of the public. More importantly, I believe that there are at least a couple of matters motivating the party leadership to do it:
1) Keep the coalition members, most notably New Kōmeitō, in line. There is nothing an incumbent likes less than an early election, and the NK is particularly wary of going to the Sōkagakkai so soon after the September Upper House election, moreover after an override vote on an issue that does not have the full-hearted support of its rank-and-file.
2) Keep the DPJ on its toes. That helps in several ways, like tempting the DPJ to overplay its hand, which it is doing on the Auer-dinner, he-said, he-said trivia.
“I kept saying, ‘(My memories) may be wrong,’ ‘I don’t want to cause inconvenience.’ But since they insisted, ‘Talk’… (Finance Minister Nukaga, etc. [ed. Akio Kyūma])) said, ‘I didn’t go’, I then became worried that I could have been mistaken.
The public had been led to believe that the DPJ had corroborating testimony on its side. Now, it turns out that what it had all along was a seating diagram and other bits of information coaxed out of Mr. Moriya himself, whose memory appears to be a few megabytes short of my PC. This is not on the order of the fake email that took down then DPJ leader Seiji Maehara, but it will be an embarrassment at best for the DPJ.
One plausible explanation for the DPJ’s continued insistence that Mr. Nukaga be called to testify on 3 December (it claims to want to question Mr. Moriya separately as part of the UH committee proceedings, in jail after he is arrested later today) is that they want to delay deliberations on the refueling bill as much as possible, partly to force the LDP to extend the current Diet session for another 30 days or so, partly because they want as much time as possible to get their own act together on their own ineffectual proposal. I have been surprised that the DPJ does not appear to be going after the allegations of potential influence peddling by Mr. Nukaga coming from Nobumasa Ōta. Perhaps it has good reasons to avoid its 2004 UH candidate Mr. Ōta, whom they pointedly did not endorse for a second try this year. I am also mystified as to why they are not throwing all their resources at attacking the overall procurement process, given the spread of corruption charges beyond the Defense Facilities Administration Agency scandals (2006) that left the MOD itself relatively untouched. Perhaps the DPJ does have something up its sleeve to spring on the unsuspecting LDP － say give names of LDP politicians who were on the take list at Yamada Yōkō and could be shown to have reciprocated with pressure on the bureaucracy － in which case they’re doing a very good job of hiding it*. Barring such surprises though, insisting on questioning Mr. Nukaga is a losing proposition, from which only LDP intransigence that would allow the DPJ to claim they are being forced to give it up so that the business of statecraft can go on can give them a face-saving out.
But so far, this is a mere sideshow blown up to unwarranted proportions. The broader issue of military procurement reform is in the capable hands of Nobutaka Machimura Chief Cabinet Secretary, though the formidable defense otaku and Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba will surely play a major role in the process. The DPJ needs to play a critical, but constructive, role here if it is to be seen as the reasonable, responsible party capable of taking the reins from the ruling coalition.
As for the main event politically, that is, the refueling bill, my assessment here remains unchanged, that a supermajority override and a motion of some kind, more specifically a censure vote, is a done deal; unless, of course, the opposition loses its nerve and forgoes the motion. After all, there will be few, if any, better occasions for the Fukuda administration to test the waters of supermajority override than a measure that has a modest majority or a sizable plurality (depending on which poll you believe) of support among a relatively informed and also relatively indifferent public. That way, you can avoid any risk of setting off an unforeseen catastrophe that would － admittedly in the most implausible of circumstances － force the Prime Minister to call a snap election** that the ruling coalition is sure to lose. And pulled off successfully, like most things, it will be easier the second time around and beyond.
*There’s potential blowback at Ichiro Ozawa, who received from Yamada Yōkō (and has now returned) almost three times as much political funds than Mr. Nukaga did. This is reminiscent of the political financing reporting controversy, which, among other things, revealed a string Mr. Ozawa’s real estate acquisitions with political funds, as well as a resurrection of the mysterious transfer of funds to Mr. Ozawa’s political coffers just before his Liberal Party was merged into the DPJ (2003), as I posted here. Having someone who embodies the old-school LDP at the helm has a downside.
**There is some talk from the LDP, some of them in positions of responsibility, about an early snap election following a censure motion. I have no access to those people, but I think that they are blowing smoke. The public will not like being asked for a new four-year mandate on the basis of a difference of opinion on a matter as esoteric and other-worldly as “right thing to do” around the Afghan war zone, so the chances of losing the two-thirds majority will be even higher. Mr. Ozawa would exit the scene, since there is little chance of the DPJ winning more seats than the LDP (the new, lower bar of success for the DPJ), but that would be a mixed blessing, and far from the clear upside that the LDP needs to justify taking a plunge.
Then what is the purpose of all the talk? Some of it could be genuine fear that public opinion might turn against them if they exercise the supermajority. But I doubt it, given the peripheral nature of the issue to the real concerns of the public. More importantly, I believe that there are at least a couple of matters motivating the party leadership to do it:
1) Keep the coalition members, most notably New Kōmeitō, in line. There is nothing an incumbent likes less than an early election, and the NK is particularly wary of going to the Sōkagakkai so soon after the September Upper House election, moreover after an override vote on an issue that does not have the full-hearted support of its rank-and-file.
2) Keep the DPJ on its toes. That helps in several ways, like tempting the DPJ to overplay its hand, which it is doing on the Auer-dinner, he-said, he-said trivia.
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.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
A Monkey Wrench Named Takemasa Moriya in the OEF-ISAF Refueling Issue
I've been prefacing my prediction that the refueling extension bill will be passed with the words "barring unforeseen circumstances", or something of the sort. Those are part weasel words of someone who's been wrong too often, but also part truth. In politics, unforeseen circumstances do happen, with uncommon frequency. Here, I am thinking, Edmund Muskie's “tears”, Gary Hart-Donna Rice, Prime Minister Uno and the geisha girl, George Allen's macaca moment, ad infinitum.
And then, you have Takemasa Moriya.
Revelations of political financing irregularities that dogged the Abe administration (and the DPJ) continued under the Fukuda adminstration, and Yoichi Masuzoe, the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister and other LDP worthies have had their share of verbal gaffes in the new administration. But the media has been more or less willing to hand out mulligans to the media-friendly Prime Minister. But there is a good chance that this will end with the latest scandal to break out.
The DPJ had been pushing in the Diet to summon as a witness Takemasa Moriya, the previous Administrative Vice Minister at the Ministry of Defense, who had been the head of the MOD bureau responsible for the refueling operations when the 800,000-200,000 gallon accounting error occurred. The LDP had resisted, claiming that it was not the custom of the Diet to summon private citizens. For one, the LDP must be afraid of the spill over to another ongoing struggle, where the DPJ has also been trying to haul in Fujio Mitarai, head of Keidanren, for questioning on labor practices irregularities at his firm Canon.
But on Friday the deluge struck, as the media jumped all over Mr. Moriya with accusations of enjoying over a hundred all-expenses-paid golf and dinner outings courtesy of Yamada Yōkō, a mid-major MOD supplier, by way of a senior executive there. News reports add that his wife accompanied him on some of these excursions, and they signed in using aliases on at least some occasions. If true, all this would have served as grounds for severe punishment under Ministry rules. Although there is no way to formally punish him, barring criminal charges, the opposition is beside itself with joy. The fractious DPJ in particular has been handed an excellent sideshow in which to rake the MOD over the coals and take the public’s eyes off their own lack of agreement on a viable alternative. This not only calls into question the reliability of the executor of the refueling but also casts a pall of scandal on the defense establishment and more specifically the LDP-New Komeitō coalition government. Predictable calls from an unnamed LDP sources are suggesting that it might be wiser to shut the Diet down as scheduled and put the bill forward in the regular Diet session.
This should not have come as a total surprise to the LDP. Mr. Moriya had been asked about his relations with the executive at the press conference he held when he retired. He gave an evasive answer that sounded very much like playing for time until he could disappear from the scene. But it appears that the LDP had not prepared themselves for this contingency. Still, the LDP could throw him under the bus, and wait it out until the two months are up. Evading the Diet on the scandal now makes the Fukuda administration only makes it look even more guilty by association, raises questions of leadership, and calls into question the importance of the refueling operations. It’s not as if Mr. Moriya will conveniently take himself out in the meantime.
If only.
But the story could be bigger than the moral degeneracy of a wayward bureaucrat. Sankei has the best backstory on the scandal. According to the article, the former senior executive had been responsible for handling MOD and politicians. He left Yamada Yōkō with a few dozen colleagues to form his own company Nihon Mirise, which quickly became a formidable competitor to Yamada Yōkō. Ymada Yōkō is suing its former employees for 1.5 billion yen in damages, and Sankei believes that the Prosecutors Office is also questioning senior executives at both companies for accounting irregularities at Yamada Yōkō while the former executive worked there. For someone who may be under criminal suspicion, the former executive seems to be talking freely to anyone who comes asking. I assume that the DPJ will try to use this controversy to discredit the entire defense establishment.
Now all this is not directly linked to the refueling operations, and it does not have any of the makings of another Lockheed bribery scandal. But the plurality public support for the refueling operations is, like its majority/plurality support for constitutional amendment, lukewarm, and lacks the compelling power of domestic pocketbook issues. I'm not ready (vicariously) to throw in the towel yet, but the air of inevitability is definitely gone.
Quote of the day:
鳩山由紀夫「法案の形で[党独自のアフガン対策を]法案の形で作り上げたいが、(守屋氏の)疑惑を最優先にしていかなければならなくなった」(Yomiuri, 20 October; assuming, of course, that he actually said that)
“We would like to put [DPJ’s own proposal for Afghanistan] in the form of a bill, but we have been forced to make suspicions over (Mr. Moriya) our top priority.”
-Yukio Hatoyama, DPJ Secretary-General
And then, you have Takemasa Moriya.
Revelations of political financing irregularities that dogged the Abe administration (and the DPJ) continued under the Fukuda adminstration, and Yoichi Masuzoe, the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister and other LDP worthies have had their share of verbal gaffes in the new administration. But the media has been more or less willing to hand out mulligans to the media-friendly Prime Minister. But there is a good chance that this will end with the latest scandal to break out.
The DPJ had been pushing in the Diet to summon as a witness Takemasa Moriya, the previous Administrative Vice Minister at the Ministry of Defense, who had been the head of the MOD bureau responsible for the refueling operations when the 800,000-200,000 gallon accounting error occurred. The LDP had resisted, claiming that it was not the custom of the Diet to summon private citizens. For one, the LDP must be afraid of the spill over to another ongoing struggle, where the DPJ has also been trying to haul in Fujio Mitarai, head of Keidanren, for questioning on labor practices irregularities at his firm Canon.
But on Friday the deluge struck, as the media jumped all over Mr. Moriya with accusations of enjoying over a hundred all-expenses-paid golf and dinner outings courtesy of Yamada Yōkō, a mid-major MOD supplier, by way of a senior executive there. News reports add that his wife accompanied him on some of these excursions, and they signed in using aliases on at least some occasions. If true, all this would have served as grounds for severe punishment under Ministry rules. Although there is no way to formally punish him, barring criminal charges, the opposition is beside itself with joy. The fractious DPJ in particular has been handed an excellent sideshow in which to rake the MOD over the coals and take the public’s eyes off their own lack of agreement on a viable alternative. This not only calls into question the reliability of the executor of the refueling but also casts a pall of scandal on the defense establishment and more specifically the LDP-New Komeitō coalition government. Predictable calls from an unnamed LDP sources are suggesting that it might be wiser to shut the Diet down as scheduled and put the bill forward in the regular Diet session.
This should not have come as a total surprise to the LDP. Mr. Moriya had been asked about his relations with the executive at the press conference he held when he retired. He gave an evasive answer that sounded very much like playing for time until he could disappear from the scene. But it appears that the LDP had not prepared themselves for this contingency. Still, the LDP could throw him under the bus, and wait it out until the two months are up. Evading the Diet on the scandal now makes the Fukuda administration only makes it look even more guilty by association, raises questions of leadership, and calls into question the importance of the refueling operations. It’s not as if Mr. Moriya will conveniently take himself out in the meantime.
If only.
But the story could be bigger than the moral degeneracy of a wayward bureaucrat. Sankei has the best backstory on the scandal. According to the article, the former senior executive had been responsible for handling MOD and politicians. He left Yamada Yōkō with a few dozen colleagues to form his own company Nihon Mirise, which quickly became a formidable competitor to Yamada Yōkō. Ymada Yōkō is suing its former employees for 1.5 billion yen in damages, and Sankei believes that the Prosecutors Office is also questioning senior executives at both companies for accounting irregularities at Yamada Yōkō while the former executive worked there. For someone who may be under criminal suspicion, the former executive seems to be talking freely to anyone who comes asking. I assume that the DPJ will try to use this controversy to discredit the entire defense establishment.
Now all this is not directly linked to the refueling operations, and it does not have any of the makings of another Lockheed bribery scandal. But the plurality public support for the refueling operations is, like its majority/plurality support for constitutional amendment, lukewarm, and lacks the compelling power of domestic pocketbook issues. I'm not ready (vicariously) to throw in the towel yet, but the air of inevitability is definitely gone.
Quote of the day:
鳩山由紀夫「法案の形で[党独自のアフガン対策を]法案の形で作り上げたいが、(守屋氏の)疑惑を最優先にしていかなければならなくなった」(Yomiuri, 20 October; assuming, of course, that he actually said that)
“We would like to put [DPJ’s own proposal for Afghanistan] in the form of a bill, but we have been forced to make suspicions over (Mr. Moriya) our top priority.”
-Yukio Hatoyama, DPJ Secretary-General
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