Sunday, March 17, 2024

Monday Asia Events March 19, 2024

FURTHERING US-JAPAN COLLABORATION ON COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY. 3/18, 9:00-10:00am (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Hudson Institute. Speakers: Yoshikazu Okamoto, Deputy Director-General for International Economic Affairs, Global Strategy Bureau, Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications; Mark Cullinane, Director of Bilateral and Regional Affairs, Information and Communications Policy Division, Cyberspace and Digital Policy Bureau, US Department of State; Meredith Potter, Managing Director for Policy (Indo-Pacific and ICT), US International Development Finance Corporation; Hisashi Inoue, Senior Representative, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Washington, DC; Riley Walters, Senior Fellow, Hudson. 

RICHARD HAASS ON FOREIGN POLICY IN AN ELECTION YEAR. 3/18, 11:00- Noon (EST), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Foregin Policy. Speaker: Richard Haass, President emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations. 

AN ERA OF ECONOMIC WARFARE: EXAMINING THE EU’S ECONOMIC SECURITY STRATEGY. 3/19, 11:00am-Noon (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Speakers: Reinhard Bütikofer, Member of the European Parliament; Mathieu Duchâtel, Resident Senior Fellow and Director of International Studies, Institut Montaigne; Tobias Gehrke, Senior Policy Fellow; European Council on Foreign Relations.

ELECTION 2024: EXPECTATIONS AND SPECULATIONS IN FOREIGN POLICY. 3/19, Noon-1:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP). Speakers: Heather Ashby, Principal Consultant, Corner Alliance; Carla Anne Robbins, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations on Defense and Security; Ali Wyne, Senior Research and Advocacy

RIDING THE TIGER: VLADIMIR PUTIN’S RUSSIA AND THE USES OF WAR. 3/19, Noon-1:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Alexander Hamilton Society. Speaker: author Dr. Leon Aron, senior fellow at the AEI. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/43usUhj

FREEDOM UNDONE: THE ASSAULT ON LIBERAL VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS IN HONG KONG. 3/19, Noon-1:30pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University. Speaker: Michael Davis, Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Research Affiliate, Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University; Professor of Law and International Affairs, O.P. Jindal Global University.

THE TAMING OF SCARCITY AND THE PROBLEMS OF PLENTY: RETHINKING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY IN A NEW ERA. 3/19, 5:00-6:30pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: International Institute for Strategic Studies. Speakers: author Francis J. Gavin, Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and Director, Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; Colin Kahl, Sydney Stein, Jr. Scholar in Residence at The Brookings Institution, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Alexandra T. Evans, Policy Researcher, RAND, Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3Pje9aW

An Insufficient Political Reform Draft

Protecting Privilege

By Takuya Nishimura,
Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
March 9, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on March 7 presented its members with a draft plan for political reform. Revisions are proposed to the party’s rules, disciplinary regulations, and governance code, including a ban on traditional factions. Although LDP lawmakers criticized party leaders for loopholes in the draft, they reluctantly approved it.

The draft imposes tougher penalties on lawmakers whose staff is arrested or indicted for involvement in illegal activities involving political funds. The draft also provides for the expulsion of any lawmaker whose accounting manager is convicted for a violation of the Political Funds Control Act.

The LDP Political Reform Headquarters, headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, has held discussions over party reforms from the beginning of this year. In an interim report from the headquarters late January, the party proposed banning factions from dealing with political funds and from involvement in the selection of ministers or party board members.

The draft of political reform was offered at the March 7 meeting concluding discussions over the past two months. It is expected to be approved in the national convention scheduled for March 17.

There are some rules that apply to LDP itself. The draft revises the Party Constitution, the Party Discipline Rules, and the Governance Codes. For example, Chapter 8 of the LDP Constitution establishes the Party Ethics Committee and the Political Ethics Hearing Committee. The March 7 draft proposes that the Political Ethics Hearing Committee can request the Secretary General to convene the Party Ethics Committee, when a party member or a policy group violates the Ethics Charter in the Party Discipline Rules. The Political Ethics Hearing Committee can also recommend that the Secretary General take necessary measures when an activity of policy group needs to be improved.

The preamble of the Party Discipline Rules establishes political ethics to secure public confidence in politics and requires each party member not to lose the trust of the people. When an accounting manager is arrested or indicted on a charge of violating the Political Funds Control Act, the draft empowers the party to impose on the lawmaker one of five penalties: suspension of appointment to party officials, recommendation to resign from the Diet or government, deregistration as an official candidate of the party in elections, disqualification as a party member, or a recommendation to leave the party.

If an accounting manager for a member is found guilty (after appeals are exhausted) of a violation of the Political Funds Control Act, the party will recommend that the lawmaker leave the party or be expelled. The expulsion clause was highlighted in news reports as the point of revising party rules after the slush fund scandal.

The Governance Code is a relatively new rule, having been introduced in 2022. The Code sets forth the responsibilities of party members and transparency of the party in order to maintain public confidence in the LDP. The March 7 draft adds to the basic principles of the code “strict treatment on the issue of political funds.” Defining “faction” as an organization, which tries to maximize its power and increase its membership, whenever it is backed by the power of money and can influence appointments to posts in the government or party board, the draft prohibits maintenance or establishment of this kind of faction. And it also prohibits policy groups from holding fundraising parties and obliges them to have an external audit.


Changes to the Governance Code do not include the elimination of factions, because it allows factions in the form of policy study groups, to which the definition of “faction” is not applied. There were some complaints in LDP that the definition did not extend to all political organizations.

The LDP has so far failed to disband factions. The party released a Political Reform Guidelines in 1989, when LDP was involved in the Recruit scandal of receiving unlisted stocks. The Guidelines have yet to be implemented. The Guidelines provide for three actions to initiate abolishing a faction: 1) the supreme adviser leaves the faction, 2) the president, vice-president, secretary general, chair of general council, chair of policy research council, chair of Diet members of Upper House, and ministers in cabinet leave the faction, and 3) the officials of the factions do not take action as if they are making party decisions.

In early 2000s, Junichiro Koizumi supported the abolition of factions. He left his faction when he became Prime Minister. However, the result of the “Koizumi reform” was that the Koizumi faction, Seiwa-kai, was subsumed by Yoshiro Mori. Under the Koizumi administration, the Mori faction grew to be the biggest faction in the LDP. It was succeeded by Nobutaka Machimura, Hiroyuki Hosoda, and Shizo Abe. Now, it is cynically expected that the factions will be reborn in the LDP, notwithstanding the latest reforms.

LDP will limit factions in the party organization by ending their role in the selection of personnel for governmental minister and party board posts. Nothing in the draft, however, excludes the influence of factions, or policy study groups, in the appointment process.

The March 7 draft also does not refer to which part of the national laws the LDP plans to amend. Although LDP urges tougher penalties for violations of the Political Funds Control Act, the opposition parties demand the resignation of any lawmaker if his/her accounting manager is conclusively found guilty of violating the statute. Some opposition parties also propose a total prohibition on donations from the business sector or organizations such as trade unions. The LDP has shown no sign of acceding to this demand.

The draft did not touch on penalties by the LDP on the lawmakers who were involved in the slush fund scandal. In the discussion in the Deliberative Council on Political Ethics in the House of Representatives, former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda insisted that Kishida punish those lawmakers. Kishida answered that the LDP would decide on sanctions. Young lawmakers in the LDP are frustrated that the leaders of the Abe faction have not taken responsibility for their false control of political funds.

The opposition parties argue that the revisions of the LDP’s internal rules are too weak to guarantee transparency and establish ethics in politics. But the LDP has not put its own ideas for amendments of the Political Funds Control Act on the table in the negotiations with the opposition parties. The LDP remains reluctant to have hearings on all 32 lawmakers who have been requested by the opposition parties to appear before the Deliberative Council on Political Ethics in the Upper House. The failure to make much progress undermines the political basis of Kishida administration, which continues to have low approval ratings.


Sunday, March 10, 2024

Monday Asia Events March 11, 2024

 GUARANTEES FOR CLIMATE FINANCE IN THE WORLD BANK-IMF AGENDA. 3/11, 10:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: TBD.

HOW TO WIN AN INFORMATION WAR: THE PROPAGANDIST WHO OUTWITTED HITLER. 3/11, Noon-1:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: New America. Speaker: author Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow, SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUKUS ARMY CHIEFS ON LAND POWER’S CONTRIBUTION TO AUKUS PILLAR 2. 3/11, 4:00-5:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: General Randy A. George, Chief of Staff of the Army, U.S Army; General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff, British Army; Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, Chief of Army, Australian Army; Charles Edel, Senior Adviser and Australia Chair; Seth G. Jones, Senior Vice President; Harold Brown, Chair and Director, International Security Program.

THE WAR BELOW WITH AUTHOR ERNEST SCHEYDER. 3/11, 4:00-6:00pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Ernest Scheyder, Senior Correspondent, Reuters; Joseph Majkut, Director, Energy Security and Climate Change Program; Baskaran Gracelin Baskaran, Research Director and Senior Fellow, Energy Security and Climate Change Program. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/49PcUbw

*INNOVATION AND GROWTH PROSPECTS FOR A COMPETITIVE JAPAN. 3/11, 7:00-8:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Wilson Center. Speakers: Izumi Devalier, Managing Director and Head of Japan Economics, Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Robert Feldman, Senior Advisor, Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities; Kenji Kushida, Senior Fellow, Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.


Saturday, March 9, 2024

Unusual Appearance of Prime Minter Kishida before the Ethics Council

An unsatisfying occurrence

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
March 2, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

The first example of an incumbent prime minister’s appearance before the Diet’s Lower House Deliberative Council on Political Ethics (DCPE) occurred last week. The DCPE was established in 1985, two years after former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was found guilty in Tokyo District Court of involvement with the 1976 Lockheed Bribery Scandal that damaged Japanese politics.

On February 29, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sat before DCPE to take questions about the slush fund scandal. He apologized for losing public confidence in politics as the result of the scandal. Despite his hope to restore that confidence, Kishida was not successful in removing all the doubts about the control of political funds in the LDP.

Kishida’s original plan was to have the DCPE meet on February 28 and 29 and to have the Lower House send the FY 2024 budget bill to the Upper House by March 1. But the meeting on February 28 was cancelled because some lawmakers from the former Abe faction refused to attend and to take questions from the committee if the meeting was open to the public. If it had been held as a closed meeting, it was obvious that the Kishida administration would have been seen as not serious about restoring public confidence in political ethics.

Making the second surprise this year, after the dissolution of his faction in January, Kishida decided on the morning of February 28 to attend the public committee meeting to explain the scandal, hoping to break the deadlock that was delaying the budget. His unusual decision helped the LDP to agree with the opposition parties to hold committee meetings on February 29 and March 1. As part of the deal, the budget bill passed the Lower House in an unusual weekend session on Saturday, March 2.

An isolated prime minister is emerging from the process. Even when Kishida orders LDP lawmakers to fulfill their responsibility to explain the scandal, they are reluctant to follow him. Lawmakers in the Abe faction have been frustrated with Kishida’s leadership since he fired all the Abe faction ministers when the scandal unfolded last December. Kishida’s trilateral cooperation with two other faction leaders, Taro Aso and Toshimitsu Motegi, has weakened after Kishida unilaterally announced the dissolution of his own faction.

As for the Nikai faction, its former secretary general, Ryota Takeda, tried to protect his boss, Toshihiro Nikai: “While Mr. Nikai is apparently the symbol of our faction, he has nothing to do with any office work or accounting,” said Takeda at the PEC meeting. By contrast, Kishida has no follower defend him as Takeda did for Nikai.

Was Kishida successful in the Q&A session of the DCPE on February 29, anyway? The short answer is no. He proposed an amendment to the Political Funds Control Act seeking heavier penalties for lawmakers whose staff engaged in illegal activities. He also said he is considering an official LDP punishment for members who were involved in the slush fund scandal. He promised to have no more private fundraising parties during his term as prime minister. Critically, however, he failed to explain the truth of the scandal.

The committee members from opposition parties asked when, by whom, and for what Abe faction’s “kickback system” had been established. The system returned to a member the proceeds of ticket sales for fundraising parties beyond the member’s quota. Kishida said that the return of excess proceeds had begun at least ten years ago. But everyone already knew that because that was revealed in the LDP’s internal survey. “We could not find exactly when and how it had been established,” said Kishida.

Another point was why the Abe faction resumed the kickbacks, even after Shinzo Abe, as the president of the faction, decided to abolish that practice in the spring of 2022. Kishida explained that LDP, which had no power to enforce its requests for information, could not find everything. Asked whether he made a request to former factional president and former Premier, Yoshiro Mori, Kishida simply answered that there had been no reference to Mori in the LDP survey.

The facts of slush fund scandal were made rather clearer in the Council on March 1 with the attendance of four leaders of the Abe faction: Yasutoshi Nishimura, the former Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; Hirokazu Matsuno, the former Chief Cabinet Secretary; Ryu Shionoya, the former Minister of Education; and Tsuyoshi Takagi, the former chair of the Diet Affairs Committee of the LDP. Nishimura, Matsuno and Takagi were former secretary generals of the Abe faction, and Shionoya chaired regular meetings of the Abe faction after Abe died.

On when the kickback system started, Matsuno told of his experience. He learned of the kickback system after he became a lawmaker and joined the Abe faction in 2000. The president of the faction at the time was Jun-ichiro Koizumi, and the prime minister was Mori. Shionoya said that the system was established over 20 years ago to help young lawmakers who could not raise political fund by themselves.

How Abe’s decision to abolish the kickback had been reversed was still not clearly explained. Nishimura, who was the secretary general of the Abe faction at the time, recalled that Abe decided in a meeting in April 2022 to end it out of his concern that the obscurity of the fund would invite doubts about the integrity of the LDP. Nishimura then said that some members requested the LDP leaders to resume the kickback system after Abe was shot to death in July.

Although Nishimura said that no conclusion was reached during an August 2022 meeting, Shionoya remembered that they talked about keeping the kickback system at least for 2022. Opposition party members quickly noted the contradiction. However, no Abe faction leaders could name who requested the resumption of kickbacks or who decided to continue it. They also denied that they had recognized the illegality of the kickbacks, even after Abe decided to abolish it.

Another big question was how the kickbacks had been spent. All four leaders said that they had been used for political purposes. If the kickbacks were sent from the faction to the political organization of each lawmaker as a donation and were used for political purpose, then they would not be taxed. But if a kickback was treated as the private income of the lawmaker, it would be taxed. Matsuno explained that some funds were kept in his office in cash and some to support meetings with lawmakers, but he did not reveal who were at the meetings.

According to the discussions in the DCPE the facts in the Abe faction were as follows: someone started the kickback system over 20 years ago and Abe decided to end it in April 2022; Abe was unfortunately assassinated three months later, and someone wanted to be given his surplus funds back; the system was reactivated in 2022 by whom no one knows; no one realized that the kickback was illegal even though it was not recorded on the political funds report; and the funds were used only for political purposes.

The opposition parties were not satisfied with this story and demanded further investigation in the Diet. There are some options going forward: asking other leaders to speak in the PEC, inviting the former president of the Abe faction to the Budget Committee hearing, or establishing new special committee for investigation. Whatever the next step, the scandal is still hanging around.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Japan’s Economic Support for Ukraine

Promises not actions

By Takuya Nishimura
, Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
February 25, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

As seen during his chairmanship of the Group of Seven last year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been keen to show Japan’s leadership role in supporting Ukraine. Because Japan’s constitution precludes explicit military contributions, Kishida has focused on the economic reconstruction of Ukraine. The February 19 international conference in Tokyo to address reconstruction in Ukraine was an attempt to demonstrate Japan’s capacity for economic contribution. However, the prolonged war makes Japan’s investment in Ukraine difficult, for now.

The day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Kishida accused Russia of a unilateral change of status quo by arms and a breach of international law by violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. “It cannot be tolerated, and I strongly blame it. It also cannot be ignored in terms of security of Japan,” said Kishida. He demanded an immediate retreat by the Russian military in order to abide by international laws.

Diplomacy is one of the tools available to a Japanese prime minister to maintain his domestic popularity. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was not willing to join international sanctions against Russia when it annexed Crimea in 2014 because he wanted to maintain a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. If he achieved a breakthrough in negotiations with Russia over the Northern Territory of Japan, it would have been a great legacy of Abe. Kishida, who served in the Abe cabinet as Minister for Foreign Affairs for four years and eight months, is one of those premiers who is firmly interested in diplomacy.

As Western countries pledged military support for Ukraine, providing tanks, missiles and fighter jets, Japan’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort has been limited to non-lethal equipment such as bullet-proof jackets and helmets. One of Japan’s three principles for exporting defense equipment prohibits transporting such equipment to a party involved in a conflict.

In the summit meeting between Kishida and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv last March, both leaders shared the view that the private sector should play an important role in the recovery and reconstruction process. Zelenskyy showed strong expectations toward Japanese investments in various ways.

After returning to Japan, Kishida convened a small meeting with other government officials to discuss public-private cooperation in rebuilding Ukraine. Kishida sought to pave the way for any company willing to participate without taking on the risks of war.
Attendees at the meeting discussed the improvement of the economic environment for investment, inclusion of third parties, cooperation with international organizations and the involvement of Japan’s official development assistance (ODA). A former foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, visited Kyiv last September with a business delegation to investigate the opportunity for investment in Ukraine.
After those preparations, Kishida administration held the Japan-Ukraine Conference for Promotion of Economic Growth and Reconstruction at Tokyo in on February 19, with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in attendance. Japan pledged economic support for Ukraine in seven categories.

One of the seven categories typical of Japan’s foreign assistance is mine sweeping and disposal of debris. With advanced search technology, Japan has experience with mine sweeping in Cambodia and South Sudan as part of ODA or United Nations peace-keeping operations. To rebuild the cities in Ukraine destroyed by Russian attacks, Japan’s skill in sorting and disposing of debris that was sharpened in responding to the East Japan Great Earthquake may bring efficiency to reconstruction efforts.

Japan also offered assistance with humanitarian relief, including medical care, electrical power, agriculture, biotechnology, digital industry, infrastructure and prevention corruption. To make investment in Ukraine easier, both counties agreed to tax breaks for companies engage in reconstruction and to expedite the visa process for businesspeople. Japan also decided to open an office of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) in Kyiv.

The greatest hurdle for Japanese private investment in Ukraine is security. For any company that plans to invest in Ukraine’s recovery, guaranteeing the safety of workers will be a critical issue. With no end in sight for the war, a company must take safety costs into account when assessing the feasibility of a reconstruction project. The Japanese government has taken no position on a ceasefire.
It is undeniable that Japan has a sense of fatigue in its support of Ukraine, much like other Western countries. The prolonged war has caused commodity prices in food and energy to rise. There is a political argument that the Kishida administration must address domestic inflation before helping Ukraine. Some companies, which still have business relationships with Russia are skeptical about supporting Ukraine, considering Russia’s adverse reaction to their doing so.

As a lawmaker elected from Hiroshima, Kishida has shown determination in supporting Ukraine, which remains under a nuclear threat from Russia. “The more success Russia will have in Ukraine, the more conflicts and wars around the world will see in the future,” said Shmyhal in the press conference in Tokyo. But as long as the war continues, it is unrealistic to expect full-scale investment in Ukraine. As a result, the reconstruction effort will be a long-term consideration for Japanese businesses.

Monday Asia Events March 4, 2024

TWO YEARS AFTER THE RETURN OF WAR ON EUROPEAN SOIL: CHARTING THE PATH FOR EU DEFENSE WITH AMBASSADOR CHARLES FRIES, DEPUTY SECRETARY GENERAL FOR PEACE, SECURITY AND DEFENSE. 3/4, 10:00-11:00am (EST), HYBRID. Sponsor: CSIS. Speaker: Ambassador Charles Fries, Deputy Secretary General for Peace, Security, and Defense, European External Action Service.


PAKISTAN’S 2024 ELECTIONS: YET ANOTHER RITUAL? 3/4, 10:00-11:30am (EST), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: South Asian Studies, Yale University. Speakers: Dr. Ijaz Gilani, Author, The Ritual of Election in Pakistan; Dr. Niloufer Siddiqui, Assistant Professor, Albany-State University of New York (SUNY); Sushant Singh, Visiting Fellow & Lecturer, South Asian Studies Council, Yale University. 

THE CHANGING DYNAMICS OF TERRORISM AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY: LAUNCH OF THE GLOBAL TERRORISM INDEX 2024. 3/4, 11:00am-Noon (EST), HYBRID. Sponsors: Alliance for Peacebuilding; Institute for Economics & Peace. Speakers: TBA.  

REACTOR COSTS AND DECARBONIZATION EFFORTS. 3/4, 1:00-2:00pm (EST), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia. Speakers: Shannon Bragg-Sitton, Director, Integrated Energy and Storage Systems, Idaho National Laboratory; Jacopo Buongiorno, Director, Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Karl Hausker, Senior Fellow, World Resources Institute; Julie Kozeracki, Senior Advisor, U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office.

INDIA ON THE RISE: HOW HIGH WILL IT GO? 3/4, 2:00pm (EST). VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Foreign Affairs. Speakers: Alyssa Ayres, Dean, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor, Distinguished Teaching, Princeton University; Ashley Tellis, Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

IGP WOMEN'S INITIATIVE LAUNCH SUMMIT. 3/4, 3:00-6:45pm (EST), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Institute of Global Politics. Speakers: Stacey Abrams, Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics, Howard University; Former Georgia House Minority Leader; Voting Rights Activist; IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow; Gina Raimondo, 40th Secretary of Commerce; Sara Jacobs, US Representative from California; Laura Kavanagh, Fire Commissioner, New York City Fire Department; Claudia López, former Colombian Senator and Mayor of Bogotá; Alex Hertel-Fernandez, Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia SIPA; IGP Faculty Advisory Board member; Ai-jen Poo, President, National Domestic Workers Alliance; Executive Director of Caring Across Generations, and Trustee of the Ford Foundation; Reshma Saujani, Founder, Girls Who Code and Moms First Adina Sterling, Katherine W. Phillips Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School; Shabana Basij-Rasikh, Cofounder and President of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA), IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow; Hon. Henrietta Fore, Former Executive Director of UNICEF; Former USAID Administrator; IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow; David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee; 74th UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs; IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow (joining virtually); Melanne Verveer, Executive Director, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security; Former Ambassador-at-Large, Office of Global Women’s Issues, US Department of State; Camille François, Lecturer of International and Public Affairs, Columbia SIPA; IGP Affiliated Faculty; Nina Jankowicz, Former Executive Director, Disinformation Governance Board of the United States; Vice President, Centre for Information Resilience, Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Journalist; Cofounder, CEO, and President of Rappler; IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow; Rachel Vogelstein, Deputy Director and Special Assistant to the President, White House Gender Policy Council; Special Advisor on Gender, White House National Security Council; Sara Casey, Assistant Professor of Population and Family Health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; Director, RAISE Initiative, Alexis McGill Johnson, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood Action Fund; Jennifer Klein, Assistant to the President and Director, White House Gender Policy Council. 


THE PROJECT-STATE AND ITS RIVALS: A NEW HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES. 3/4, 4:00pm (EST), VIRTUAL. Sponsors: American Historical Association; Wilson Center. Speakers: Charles S. Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University; Victoria de Grazia, Moore Collegiate Professor of History.

JAPAN’S STRATEGIC COOPERATION WITH NATO: CONNECTIVITY BETWEEN UKRAINE AND TAIWAN CRISES. 3/4, 4:30-6:00pm (EST), HYBRID. Sponsor: WEAI, Columbia University. Speaker: Tomonori Yoshizaki, Professor, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) Former Vice President of National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Ministry of Defense, Japan.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Japan’s Diet Investigates the LDP’s Slush Fund Scandal

Kisha tries to keep it contained

By Takuya Nishimura,
Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
February 18, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

On February 15, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) released the result of interviews of its members who were involved in the slush fund scandal. These politicians had received money from their factions from the ticket sales in fundraising parties beyond their quota. The interviews revealed that many faction members were aware of the secret practice, thus inviting skepticism on the ethical principles of the LDP.

As a result, the opposition parties have demanded a thorough disclosure the LDP’s fundraising practices. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, hoping to quell discontent, has made up his mind to accept the opposition’s request for lawmakers to take questions at the Diet’s Special Committees on Political Ethics in each Chamber.

An investigation team in LDP, headed by the chair of General Council, Hiroshi Moriyama, conducted interviews of 85 members who had accepted funds from their factions or kept them for themselves. Of the 85, 82 were lawmakers, and 3 were branch chiefs planning to run for next general election of House of Representatives. 79 were affiliated with the Abe faction and 6 with the Nikai faction, both of which were dissolved after the scandal was revealed.

The investigation team found that 32 members of the 85 interviewed had recognized that the money they received was the return of ticket sales beyond their quota. Eleven members out of the 32 knew that the funds had not been reported to the government –-meaning that they knew the funds were kept secret.

Regardless what kind of the fund it was, 53 members out of the 85 had already spent the money, partly or totally, for their political activities. The other 32 kept it in their offices. The activities included payments to their staff and for meetings, or for the purchase of cars, books, souvenirs, and lunchboxes. Is buying books or lunchboxes political activity? The members might have explained that the books were distributed to people outside of their election districts and that lunchboxes were for staff members at lunchtime events. If the items had been distributed in a member’s district, they would be regarded as illegal donations.

The total amount of the secret funds of the 85 members interviewed was ¥579 million. The lawmaker who had spent the most was the former Secretary of General, Toshihiro Nikai: ¥35 million. Nikai’s political organization once explained that it had bought about 28,000 copies of books, worth ¥34 million, for three years between 2020 and 2022. Nikai’s argument that he read this number of books is ridiculous and serves only to increasing public skepticism about his use of the money.

While the interviews were made for promoting political reform, Kishida knows well that it was not enough. “Taking every opportunity,” said Kishida, “the related members have to take responsibility for regaining people’s credibility.” Now that public prosecutors have finished their investigation of the slush fund scandal and have indicted three lawmakers and other accounting managers of factions, it makes sense for the Diet to look into how LDP lawmakers were involved with the secret funds.

The opposition parties demanded that the LDP convene the Special Committee on Political Ethics in both Houses, where the lawmakers would explain their roles. Although the LDP was reluctant to accede to that demand, Kishida ordered the LDP leaders to consider holding hearings. He is afraid of public frustration with the strange expenditures of tax money by LDP lawmakers.

A Special Committee on Political Ethics was established in each House in 1985, when the Lockheed Scandal shook Japanese politics. A committee meets at the request of any lawmaker who wishes to explain an ethical problem or when one-third of all committee members request a meeting, and a majority of the committeeapproves it. Eight lawmakers have appeared before the committee and answered questions in the past. All eight were members of House of Representatives.

A hearing before one of the special committees differs from hearings before other committees in two important respects: the special committees do not take sworn testimony, and the hearings are usually closed to the public. By contrast, the Committee on the Budget of each House sometimes invites witnesses to testify under oath in public hearings. Under the Diet Testimony Act, any untruth is subject to the penalties for perjury.

Over time, special committees’ approach has sometimes worked for investigations on important political incidents. In this case, however, even if one of the special committees meets in this Diet session and if a member asks that the hearing be open to the public, it is unlikely that the entirety of the scandals will be disclosed.

The opposition parties regard the special committee in the House of Representatives as the first step in scrutinizing the LDP’s scandal. The parties have requested that 51 LDP members appear before the special committee, hoping to question all the members interviewed in the LDP investigation except members of House of Councillors. If the question-and-answer sessions are insufficient, the opposition parties will ask for sworn testimony later on.

It is likely that Kishida will treat a meeting of the special committee as a bargaining chip in negotiations over the FY 2024 budget bill. If the bill passes the House of Representatives 30 days prior to the end of March, that is, by March 2 the budget will be in place at the beginning of FY 2024. However, any meetings of the special committee to hear from the 51 LDP members involved in the scandal will take a long period of time, jeopardizing passage of the budget bill.

The focus in the LDP so far is on whether the five leaders of Abe faction will appear before the special committee. Four of the five leaders, except Hiroshige Seko, are the members of House of Representatives. While young lawmakers in the Abe faction are frustrated with the leadership of the former faction, the five leaders insist on their innocence, stressing that the secret fund was managed without notice to them. It depends on Kishida’s leadership whether these members will answer the questions about slush funds in the special committee.

Monday Asia Events February 26, 2024

CARNEGIE GLOBAL DIALOGUE: CHINA AND EUROPE. 2/26, 8:00-9:00am (EST), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Carnegie. Speakers: Lizza Bomassi, Deputy Director of Carnegie Europe; Yifan Ding, President of China Society for France Studies; Alice Ekman, Senior analyst, European Union Institute for Security Studies.

INVESTING IN LEADING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY: AN UPDATE ON CHIPS ACT IMPLEMENTATION. 2/26, 11:00am-Noon (EST). HYBRID. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Gina M. Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Dr. Charles Wessner, Senior Advisor, CSIS and research professor, Georgetown University. 

THE WORLD OF LOBBYING AND CURRENT STATE OF POLITICS ON CAPITOL HILL. 2/26, 5:00-6:00pm (EST), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Institute of World Politics. Speaker: Brian Johnson, Vice President of disability claims consulting company Veterans Guardian.

U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE IN THE INDO-PACIFIC: UNILATERAL, BILATERAL & MULTILATERAL CAPABILITIES. 2/26, 5:30-8:00pm (EST), HYBRID. Sponsors: Japan-America Society of Washington; National War College — National War College Alumni Association; Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA. Speakers: Chip Gregson, Lieutenant General USMC (Ret), Distinguished Senior Fellow, Sasakawa USA; Motosada Matano, Political Minister, Embassy of Japan. 

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Monday Asia Events February 19, 2024

President's Day, National Holiday, in the United States

US Congress in recess

THE DOHA GLOBAL SOUTH HEALTH POLICY INITIATIVE, “ENHANCING PRIMARY HEALTHCARE ACCESS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS.” 2/19, 9:00am-Noon (AST), 8:00-11:00am (EST), HYBRID. Sponsors: Middlee East Council on Global Affairs; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Speakers: Chris Elias, President of the Global Development Division, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Deo Nshimirimana, Member of the Africa Regional Immunization Technical Advisory Committee, World Health Organization; Joy Phumaphi, Executive Secretary, African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA). 

INDONESIA’S 2024 ELECTIONS: JAVA AND BEYOND. 2/19 9:00-10:00pm; 2/20, 10:00-11:30am (SST), HYBRID. Sponsor: Yusof Ishak Institute. Speakers: Deasy Simandjuntak is a political scientist and a political anthropologist. She is Associate Fellow at ISEAS and Adjunct Associate Professor at National Chengchi University, Taipei. Antonius Made Tony Supriatma is a Visiting Research Fellow at ISEAS Ian Douglas Wilson is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at ISEAS. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

Kishida Administration Grilled by Opposition Parties

CCS Hayashi
And it is inconclusive

By Takuya Nishimura
, Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
February 10, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

In the Japanese Diet, the Budget Committees of both Houses are where the hottest political issues are discussed between lawmakers and government officials. Last week, starting on February 5, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was grilled by members of the Lower House Budget Committee over his handling of political reform within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and his appointment of cabinet ministers connected to the controversial Unification Church. Kishida’s strategy is to give the opposition parties vague and inconclusive answers.

The Budget Committee hearings are the highlight of the Diet session every year and are ordinarily scheduled a week after the Q&A in the plenary session after the Prime Minister’s annual policy speech. While the Q&A in the plenary session is in the form of prepared questions and answers, a Budget Committee hearing is an unscripted debate within the time allocated to every party. The hearing is nominally about the budget bill submitted to the Diet, but the opposition parties ask about everything, because the budget bill deals with everything.

In the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives (Lower House), the opposition parties demanded to know the purpose of contributions by the LDP to its leaders. It was reported that former Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai had received ¥5 billion from that fund over five years. While LDP is continuing to investigate the failures to disclose cash distributions from each LDP faction to its members, the party’s own fund, which covers “policy activities expenses,” has been untouched by the slush fund scandal because this fund is not subject to disclosure requirements.

Kishida asserted a principle of “freedom of political activity” to defend the secrecy of the LDP’s expenses. “Freedom of political activity and people’s right to know should be balanced,” Kishida told the Secretary General for the Constitutional Democratic Party, Katsuya Okada. “Once the fund was disclosed,” Kishida argued, “it reveals business secrets of companies or organizations, and strategic plan of party will be leaked to the rivals in politics, or even to foreign countries.”

It is hard to understand why Kishida so strongly opposes disclosures about the LDP fund. The opposition parties are skeptical about the money, supposing that it must be used for things they cannot explain. It is not strange for people to imagine that the money must have ultimately been handed to local supporters, just as in the bribery cases of Katsuyuki Kawai in Hiroshima or Mito Kakizawa in Tokyo.

The opposition parties even referred to a possibility of tax evasion. Yuichi Goto (CDP) insisted that the leaders who received funds from the LDP may well have evaded income taxes, if they took unused funds and failed to report them on tax returns. A witness from Ministry of Finance testified that the receipt of surplus cash from the LDP may be a taxable event. Kishida reiterated that he would not explain the use of the fund.

Opposition party attacks on Kishida’s leadership have not been limited to reforms in response to the slush fund scandal and have spread to his appointments of ministers of his administration. Asahi Shimbun reported that the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Masahito Moriyama, had received the support of the Federation for World Peace (FWP), an organization connected to Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU, better known as the Unification Church), in the 2021 election. In October 2023, Moriyama’s ministry sought a court order to disband the FFWPU.

According to a series of reports by the Asahi, Moriyama accepted support from FWP for his election campaign, including a telephone bank staffed by FWP members, urging voters to vote. The newspaper also reported that Moriyama had signed a policy accord with FWP before his appointment. The accord included an agreement to support legislation to amend the constitution to enhance security as well as legislation to teach family values and to give children a moral education. He was also asked to caution voters against promoting LGBTQ rights and same sex marriage.

Moriyama’s ministry oversees religious corporations. Once entering into a policy accord with the FWP, Moriyama became responsible for implementing these policies even after he became minister. Obviously, the ministry’s neutrality on these policies was compromised.

In the hearing before the Lower House Budget Committee, Moriyama vaguely recalled that he had received some support from FWP. The next day, however, he refused to provide clear answers about the nature of his relationship with the FWP, repeating “I have no memory of it.” Kishida rejecting a request to replace Moriyama, said that Moriyama had terminated his relationship with FWP.

When the fact of a meeting with a person connected to FFWPU in 2019 was revealed last December Kishida said that he did not know who was in the meeting. The memory of Kishida also has a certain ambiguity.

Questions surrounding that meeting involve not only Moriyama but also another minister closer to Kishida. Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, admitted to having a meeting with FWP officials before the 2021 election. In his daily press conference, Hayashi said that he was not sure about who was there in the 2019 meeting and what they talked about. The Harvard grad also has memory issues.

Watching Kishida’s mounting troubles, some LDP leaders have begun to act. Former Minister of Defense and former LDP Secretary General, Shigeru Ishiba, held a meeting with his colleagues, which he maintains as policy study group. The minister in charge of Economic Security, Sanae Takaichi, gave a lecture to a conservative group.

The activities of these quasi-factions in the LDP began only one week after the largest group, the Abe faction, and some other factions announced their dissolution. These are inconvenient facts for Kishida who will base his leadership on ending factions and promoting political reform in the LDP when he seeks reelection as LDP president this fall. More questions will be coming from the Upper House Budget Committee in its hearing with the Prime Minister in March.

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Far From Political Normality in Japan

Kishida Adrift 

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
February 4, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

Having partly dealt with the slush fund scandal in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hopes to re-focus on substantive policy issues such as disaster relief in the Noto Peninsula and passage of the FY 2024 budget bill in the Diet. However, the slush fund scandal is not over. The opposition parties have proposed various political reforms, but Kishida’s response is weak. His administration still operates far from political normality.

The ordinary session of the Diet in 2024 started with an unusual schedule. The customary policy speech by the Prime Minister on the first day of the session was delayed this year because the opposition parties demanded that the Committee of Budget in both Houses discuss political reforms beforehand. The LDP had no choice but to agree to debates, given public interest in political reform as a result of the slush fund scandal.

In the debates, the opposition parties proposed such political reforms as a complete prohibition on fundraising parties or the disclosure of funds raised for the parties that were then distributed to lawmakers. Forced into a defensive position, Kishida apologized for inviting a situation in which the LDP has lost public confidence. But he left the direction of political reform to the discussion among the parties, without offering any of his own ideas.

If Kishida were not shackled to the scandal, this Diet session should have been a stage for him to fight deflation. In his policy speech after the debates in the committee, Kishida stressed the opportunity to remove deflation and to introduce a phase of new growth with his “new capitalism” of wage hikes and positive investment. “With every effort, I am going to achieve a wage increase beyond price hikes,” said Kishida.

Since the Diet session is the first since the Noto Peninsula earthquake on January 1, Kishida pledged ¥1 trillion toward recovery in the stricken area. “I am responsible for the policies from getting the people back to their hometown to revitalization of the region,” Kishida emphasized.

The customary speech of a Prime Minister is also customarily followed by a questioning session with representatives from each party. Questions from the opposition parties this time focused on political reform. The head of the Constitutional Democratic Party, Kenta Izumi, demanded that Kishida request all the LDP members who were involved in the secret funds scandal to resign. The incoming chairwoman of the Japanese Communist Party, Tomoko Tamura, asked Kishida to prohibit any kind of donation from companies or organizations.

Kishida’s answers were ambiguous. Regarding resignations, Kishida said that he would consider making a request in the future after the lawmakers involved in the scandal explain their roles and the LDP fully grasps the facts. It is not clear what action Kishida is going to take. On the donations a from a company or organization, Kishida stressed the freedom of political activity for companies and organizations and said that such donations would not be inappropriate.

While Kishida has been facing harsh criticism from the opposition parties in the Diet, the discussion within the LDP of political reforms remains unsettled. The Abe faction announced on January 31 that it had not included ¥676 million in its political fund reports between 2018 and 2022, and declared the dissolution of the faction, ending its 45-year history, in its last regular meeting on February 1.

The chairperson of the Abe faction, Ryu Shionoya, apologized to its members, saying that he was feeling like his gut was torn apart. But some young members called for Shionoya’s resignation as a lawmaker in expiation for the faction’s scandal. Some members revealed that they had been instructed by the faction not to report the secret fund. Shionoya refused to resign and said that the responsibility of the leaders would be determined sometime in the future. It is fair to say that the rule of the Abe faction in the LDP for the two decades, starting from the time of Junichiro Koizumi administration, has ended.

The outflow of members has not ended Motegi faction. Following the lead of the chair of the LDP Election Strategy Committee, Yuko Obuchi, several lawmakers in both Houses decided to leave the Motegi faction. The remaining members of the Motegi faction have decided to continue its activities as a policy study group without weekly regular meetings. The Kishida faction has decided to close its office and finish its activity as a policy group.

The only faction that has not stepped back (if not dissolved) is the Aso faction. But the faction’s leader, Taro Aso, is creating his own gaffes. In a speech in the Fukuoka prefecture last month, Aso decided to describe the appearance and age of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Yoko Kamikawa. “From the viewpoint of us, this aunt is doing good. She is not that beautiful, though,” said Aso.

The ensuing criticism has gone beyond Aso to Kamikawa, who did not protest Aso’s remarks. Kishida left a boilerplate comment in the discussion of the Diet that members should refrain from mocking someone’s age or appearance.

The LDP has started to interview its members to obtain details on the slush fund scandal. “Even though the factions are dissolved, the responsibility of related people for explaining what happened will remain,” said Kishida in the Diet. Some members of the opposition parties would like to invite LDP lawmakers a hearing on the scandal or to establish a special committee to investigate. Beyond answering questions in the Diet, Kishida seems to have no idea of how to navigate through this political crisis.