The extraordinary Diet session closed on Dec. 10 after a law regulating unscrupulous solicitations of donations by religious and other groups was enacted at the last minute.

It marked a first step toward providing relief to victims of such practices.

But the deep-rooted ties between the Unification Church, formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and politicians, especially those in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, have yet to be elucidated.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida would be wrong to think that the LDP-church problem has been closed just because he got through the Diet session.

The Diet also readily approved the second supplementary budget, worth about 29 trillion yen ($212 billion), although it entails a number of issues, including its heavy dependence on debts and the arbitrary use of the reserve funds system.

Most opposition parties voted against the budget bill, but they failed to dig sufficiently into its problems.

It is difficult to say the Diet fulfilled its duty as the legislative branch of government to scrutinize the budget proposal.

By contrast, ruling and opposition parties engaged in rare extensive consultations on the donation victims relief legislation until they finally agreed to modify a government-drafted bill for the law.

We appreciate the way the ruling and opposition parties worked tenaciously to seek common ground on the matter, although many issues remain unresolved.

Former church followers, their family members and lawyers supporting them said they don’t believe the law will be effective.

While the new law will serve as a starting point to prevent further victimization, a review of past ties between the religious group and political circles has been put on the back burner.

“I am listening steadfastly to the voices of the public while working to realize accountability,” Kishida said about the church ties during his policy speech at the opening of the Diet session on Oct. 3.

That, however, ended up as a hollow promise.

Kishida said there was “no political intervention” when the Unification Church was allowed to rename itself during Shinzo Abe’s tenure as prime minister. Kishida, however, has provided no convincing ground for that assertion.

He has refused to open a probe into the role played by Abe, an apparent key contact between the church and the LDP before he was fatally shot in July.

It has been pointed out that Koichi Hagiuda, chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council, had deep connections with the religious group. Kishida likely has not pressed him to fulfill his accountability on the matter, either.

The LDP “reviewed” its lawmakers’ church ties based on their self-assessments. That procedure evidently had its limitations, but Kishida never displayed leadership as president of the party.

Even after it emerged that some LDP lawmakers had signed de facto policy pacts with the Unification Church, Kishida refused to take a survey of all party lawmakers and only reiterated that the pacts did not affect government policy.

The Diet session opened at a time when public opinion became polarized over the Sept. 27 state funeral for Abe, and the LDP’s church ties and other factors had taken a heavy toll on the Kishida Cabinet’s approval ratings.

Opposition parties had demanded a Diet session be convened, but the government and ruling parties shelved their request, based on Article 53 of the Constitution, for as long as one-and-a-half months.

The session represented a crucial stage where Kishida could have regained public trust, but these hopes were dashed when three members of his Cabinet stepped down in succession: Daishiro Yamagiwa, the state minister in charge of economic revitalization; Justice Minister Yasuhiro Hanashi; and Minoru Terada, the internal affairs minister.

Kishida gave orders to increase Japan’s defense-related spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product to bolster national security. He also instructed the ruling parties to consider an annual tax hike of 1 trillion yen to cover part of the spending increase.

The orders were given in the closing days of the Diet session, leaving little time for serious debate.

Kishida should take the lead in facing up to his own accountability.

Without doing so, he will never restore public trust in his administration.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 11