The Diet on March 27 enacted the fiscal 2020 budget, designed to finance more than 100 trillion yen ($925 billion) in government spending for the year starting in April.

With the basic spending plan for the new fiscal year in place, the government will now move to hammer out a package of measures to mitigate the potentially devastating economic impact of the new coronavirus pandemic and formulate the first supplementary budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Speaking at a March 27 Upper House Budget Committee session, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the current situation does not yet require him to declare a state of emergency under the revised special measures law to respond to outbreaks of new strains of influenza.

But there is no telling how things will go from now on, given that the number of confirmed cases in Tokyo has risen markedly in recent days, prompting Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike and her counterparts in four neighboring prefectures to send out a joint message calling on residents in the metropolitan area to avoid going out and traveling as little as possible this weekend.

It is quite possible that the government will be forced to make a tough decision sometime in the coming weeks.

If Abe declares a state of emergency, prefectural governors will be empowered to take bold actions, such as urging local residents to stay at home, restricting events and temporarily closing schools and welfare facilities for the elderly.

Given that such a step that restricts the freedom and rights of citizens would cause serious inconveniences for everybody, the government cannot possibly hope to win broad public support for the measure unless it is trusted by the people.

From this point of view, it is hard to overlook the damage being caused to the government’s credibility by the adamant refusal of Abe and Finance Minister Taro Aso to mount a fresh investigation into the Moritomo Gakuen scandal.

One week has passed since the release of notes left behind by Toshio Akagi, a Finance Ministry official who killed himself after being forced to falsify public documents concerning the dubious sale of state-owned land to Moritomo Gakuen, a private school operator linked to Abe’s wife, Akie.

The notes say that Nobuhisa Sagawa, who was director-general of the Financial Bureau that oversaw the sale of state assets, gave the orders for the falsifications despite resistance put up by officials of the Kinki Local Finance Bureau, who were directly involved in the land deal at the heart of the scandal.

Akagi was one of the officials at the bureau. His notes describe the process of the negotiations in detail, citing the names of people involved, including Sagawa.

The senior Finance Ministry officials that orchestrated the falsification of the documents were mostly promoted later, with Sagawa appointed as head of the National Tax Agency. But Akagi ended his life, apparently tortured by strong pangs of conscience.

The last of his notes state that underlings in the end become scapegoats.

In the Diet sessions during the past week, Abe and Aso repeatedly rejected calls for a fresh probe into the scandal, arguing that there is “no large discrepancy” between the results of the ministry’s internal investigation into the falsifications released in June 2018 and the content of Akagi’s notes.

Their remarks suggested the absence of any sincere intention to respond to Akagi’s widow’s desperate yearning to know the truth.

Akagi’s widow, who has filed a damages lawsuit against the government, criticized their remarks, saying the pair are not in a position to refuse a fresh investigation since they are among those who should be investigated.

This is a reasonable argument. A new inquiry by an independent panel is indispensable for getting to the bottom of the scandal.

And the Diet should carry out the mission since its role as the watchdog of the administrative branch has been disrespected and undermined by the falsification and false remarks by the officials involved during Diet questioning.

There is one good precedent. The Diet set up its own investigative committee to look into the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster that was separate from the government’s fact-finding committee.

The ruling and opposition camps should embark on a bipartisan undertaking to uncover the whole picture of the scandal to answer all key questions. The new inquiry should also tackle the questionable steep discount on the price of the land sold to Moritomo Gakuen, an issue that was not even covered by the ministry’s investigation.

--The Asahi Shimbun, March 28