Photo/Illutration Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers have until Feb. 8 to fill in this questionnaire about revenue gained through intraparty factions. (The Asahi Shimbun)

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party came under fire for asking only two questions in a survey that is supposed to reveal details of a political fund scandal that have eluded even prosecutors.

One query in the questionnaire distributed to all party lawmakers on Feb. 5 was whether they failed to list revenues gained from their factions’ fund-raising parties on political fund reports from 2018 to 2022. The other question asked for the amounts of such unreported funds.

The questionnaire did not even ask why the lawmakers did not report the money or how it was used.

Kazunori Yamai of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan said the survey is extremely insufficient.

“You should ask what the money was spent on if you carry out a survey,” said Yamai, who serves as senior director of the Lower House Budget Committee.

Akira Koike, who heads the Japanese Communist Party’s secretariat, told a news conference that the LDP survey should show how the money was kept off the books and what it was used for.

Even some within the LDP questioned the meaning of the survey.

“I thought the survey would ask many more questions,” a former Cabinet minister said. “As it is, the survey is nothing but a political gesture, and it was bound to be harshly criticized.”

The ruling party is separately conducting hearings of about 80 lawmakers who belong to the Abe, Nikai and Kishida factions over unreported political funds.

These hearings have so far also been described as inadequate.

Former accounting officials of the three factions were charged Jan. 19 over their suspected failure to report revenues from fund-raising parties in the factions’ political fund income and expenditure reports.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a Lower House Budget Committee session on Feb. 5 that the LDP intends to fulfill its responsibilities to make necessary explanations based on the survey of all lawmakers and the hearings of members of the three factions.

LDP lawmakers were asked to fill out the questionnaire by Feb. 8.

Kishida said both the survey and the hearings will be completed this week, and the results of the survey will be compiled early next week.

The opposition parties said they may consider boycotting Diet proceedings if the findings of the survey and the hearings are insufficient.

A mid-ranking lawmaker who belongs to the Motegi faction in the LDP said the party is in a tough spot.

“If new revelations emerge from the survey, the media will pounce on them as huge problems,” the lawmaker said. “If nothing comes out, the survey will be criticized as an LDP attempt to pretend to be doing something about the scandal.”

On Feb. 5, the LDP presented opposition parties with a list of LDP lawmakers who have recently corrected their organizations’ political fund reports in connection with the scandal.

But the list only covers 91 members of the Abe faction and seven members of the Nikai faction, and the corrected amounts are provided only for 2020 through 2022.

The CDP, Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party), the Japanese Communist Party and the Democratic Party for the People had demanded that the LDP ask all of its lawmakers to declare whether they received unreported political funds.

They had called on the LDP to submit a list of all member lawmakers, complete with amounts they received over five years from 2018 and descriptions of how the money was used.

The opposition parties are particularly interested in figures for 2019, when an Upper House election was held.

The LDP factions are believed to have returned to their lawmakers money from the sales of tickets to fund-raising parties that exceeded the quotas assigned to them.

But under a special arrangement, the factions have apparently returned to Upper House members all money gained from sales of fund-raising tickets in years when they are up for re-election.

(This article was compiled from reports by Kohei Morioka, Shinichi Fujiwara and Kenji Izawa.)

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