Bureaucrats wined and dined by stakeholders are violating the National Public Service Ethics Code.

Cabinet ministers and other politicians in top ministry positions, however, are allowed to excuse themselves by saying, for example, that their dinners are not of the sort that may “arouse suspicion from the public.”

Japan’s ministerial code of conduct, which espouses “integrity” and “political neutrality” of those in public office, could be described as existing in name only.

The recent scandal over stakeholders’ wining and dining of telecommunications ministry bureaucrats, which started from a report on dinners they had with officials of a broadcasting company, including Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s eldest son who works for it, has spread to involve politicians as well.

It was learned that Seiko Noda, executive acting secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and Lower House member Sanae Takaichi, also of the LDP, dined with officials of telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), including President Jun Sawada, while they each served as telecommunications minister.

Later, Ryota Takeda, the telecommunications minister in office, also admitted he had attended a dinner where Sawada was present.

The ministerial code prohibits Cabinet ministers, senior vice ministers and parliamentary secretaries from being “entertained or treated” by interested businesses.

Noda and Takaichi belatedly repaid their portions of the cost of the dinners that had been covered by NTT, but they insist the meetings were only “social gatherings” for “exchanging views,” which do not amount to wining and dining.

Takeda, who said he paid 10,000 yen ($91), also argued his attendance at the dinner does not violate the ministerial code because he received no requests for favors, such as on permits and licenses, on the occasion.

Those explanations are seldom acceptable.

Attending a dinner should amount to being wined and dined if the cost was covered by another party. It is not so much the presence or absence of concrete solicitations as the very act of accepting invitations from specific businesses that arouses suspicion about the fairness of public administration services.

The excuses we have heard are allowed to go unchallenged because provisions of the ministerial code are ambiguous. The code only says that ministers and others “should not engage in acts that may arouse the suspicion of the public, such as being entertained or treated.”

That makes room for the self-serving interpretation that attending dinners is OK if they are not of the type that may “arouse the suspicion of the public.”

Much the same can be said of political fund-raising parties.

The ministerial code says that Cabinet ministers, senior vice ministers and parliamentary secretaries should refrain from holding similar parties “of large scales,” but it sets no standards for that description in terms, for example, of the number of participants in a party or the funds raised.

As things stand, fund-raising parties by Cabinet ministers are no rarity. Suga, for example, hosted a total of nine fund-raising parties and raised 77.19 million yen therefrom, in 2019, when he served as chief Cabinet secretary.

It is left to the discretion of individual politicians to decide what constitutes violations of the ministerial code, which, in addition, come with no penalties. That would seldom allow the purpose of the code, which is about guaranteeing public trust in politicians and public administration services, to be attained.

The ministerial code was approved by the Cabinet when central government offices were reorganized in 2001, because many politicians from the ruling parties were joining the government anew in the capacity of senior vice ministers and parliamentary secretaries.

It has been pointed out from the very beginning that the regulations in the code were more lax and more ambiguous than those in a British code after which it was modeled.

A trend for emphasizing the leadership of politicians over bureaucrats has since further intensified and so has the clout of Cabinet ministers over policy decisions. That means politicians taking public offices in the government are called on to exercise stricter ethics.

Suga should draw on this opportunity to review the ministerial code radically and transform it into something more effective.

--The Asahi Shimbun, March 28