Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida enters the prime minister’s office on Jan. 22. (Takeshi Iwashita)

Seventy-two percent of voters said dissolution of factions in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will not restore public trust in politics, compared with 19 percent who said it will, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.

A scandal over unreported political funds among LDP factions has rocked Japanese politics and pushed down the approval rating of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet.

The Cabinet approval rating was 23 percent, according to the survey conducted on Jan. 20-21, unchanged from the previous survey in December. It is the lowest rating for any administration since the LDP returned to power in 2012.

The disapproval rating was 66 percent, also the same as in the December survey and the highest since 2012.

Kishida said Jan. 19 that he would disband the faction that he had headed until Dec. 7, citing the need to restore public trust in politics.

The Abe faction and the Nikai faction, also under criminal investigation in the scandal, followed suit and decided the same day to disband themselves.

In the nationwide telephone survey, 61 percent of respondents said they approve of the prime minister’s decision to disband what is still called the Kishida faction, roughly double the 29 percent who said they do not.

Kishida admitted that the faction failed to list parts of revenues from its fund-raising parties in political fund reports. He said the failure was a result of “accumulated clerical errors.”

Eighty-nine percent of survey respondents said they are not satisfied with Kishida’s explanation, while just 7 percent said they are.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Department filed a summary indictment, seeking a fine, against a former accounting official of the Kishida faction on charges of failing to report about 30 million yen ($202,000).

Prosecutors also indicted former accounting officials of the Abe and Nikai factions, seeking trials, on charges of failing to report about 1.35 billion yen and about 380 million yen, respectively, in income and expenditures in connection with fund-raising parties.

However, prosecutors, citing a lack of evidence, concluded that Diet members who serve as senior officials of the Abe faction would not be charged with conspiring with the former accounting official in false reporting offenses under the Political Fund Control Law.

Eighty percent of survey respondents said they are not satisfied with prosecutors’ decision not to indict senior Abe faction officials, while 12 percent said they are.

Critics said it is difficult to indict a politician even if a related accounting official is found guilty of preparing false political fund income and expenditure reports.

Legal experts said the Political Fund Control Law should be revised to introduce a system under which a politician is jointly held responsible when an accounting official is convicted of violating the law.

Eighty-three percent of survey respondents said such a system should be introduced, while 10 percent said it is not necessary.

When asked about Kishida’s overall handling of the political fund scandal, 75 percent said they do not approve of it, compared with 17 percent who said they do.

Even among those who approve of the prime minister’s decision to disband the Kishida faction, 71 percent said they do not approve of Kishida’s handling of the scandal itself, compared with 24 percent who said they do.

The LDP’s support rating, which has hovered under 30 percent since July, stood at 24 percent in the latest survey, compared with 23 percent in December.

The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan received 4 percent of support, compared with 5 percent in December, while Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) garnered 6 percent, up from 4 percent in December.

The survey was conducted through calls to randomly generated telephone numbers. There were 456 valid responses from voters contacted by fixed telephones, or 48 percent of the total, and 723 responses from those contacted by cellphones, or 41 percent.

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