Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks to reporters as he leaves his office on Dec. 25. (Takeshi Iwashita)

As the Political Fund Control Law is so notoriously full of loopholes, it is often likened to a sieve.

A systemic reform is urgently needed to actualize the basic intent of the law, which is to keep the flow of political funds transparent so that the public can monitor--and censure, if necessary--the activities of politicians and political parties.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is also the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is planning to establish a new in-house organ in early January in hopes of recovering his party's tattered credibility.

This organ will report directly to him and discuss legal revision, among other matters.

The LDP's ongoing scandal over "habatsu" faction fund-raisers has escalated into former chief Cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and other senior executives of the Abe faction submitting voluntarily to questioning by investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office.

Aside from facing criminal prosecution, the LDP must also be willing to explain the situation to the public and prove itself capable of taking appropriate and necessary action.

A purchase of up to 200,000 yen ($1,400) of fund-raiser tickets does not require the amount and the name of the purchaser to be entered in the political fund income/expenditure report.

Unlike standard donations that must be disclosed if they exceed 50,000 yen, the opacity of fund-raiser ticket transactions is said to create a "hotbed of money under the table."

Attention has been directed anew to the fact that fund-raiser ticket purchases have served as a loophole for corporate and group donations that are permitted only if they are given to political parties and their regional branches.

Regulating fund-raisers and adding greater transparency to them are vital, as are stiffer penalties for failure to report ticket purchases or falsifying the report.

However, just making the flow of political funds more transparent is definitely not enough.

In particular, it is necessary to address "policy activity expenses," which enable the party to give money to individual members without the latter having to disclose the uses to which the money is put.

The Political Fund Control Law forbids donations to individual politicians. It also requires fund management organizations or party branches to handle the donations and make due reports.

However, "donations made by the party" are an exception to the rule. They are given as policy activity expenses to senior party members, who, in turn, hand the money over to individual politicians.

And since the latter are individuals and not political groups, they are not obliged to disclose the uses of that money.

Opposition parties also have their policy activity expenses. But in the LDP's case, the party last year gave a total of about 1.42 billion yen to 15 senior members of various factions, including Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi.

The money was said to enable the recipients to "use it on behalf of the party for purposes such as research, drafting policies or expanding the party's influence."

But we absolutely refuse to accept this explanation when the amount of money is so huge and we are not even told what it was used for.

At a recent news conference, Kishida promised to take the lead in his battle to renovate the party.

If his words are true, he must eliminate all in-house resistance and give his all to mapping out a concrete plan of action for a total reform that allows no exceptions.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 27

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