Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida leaves the prime minister’s office on Feb. 13. (Takeshi Iwashita)

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will acquiesce to an opposition demand and convene a session of the Diet’s ethics panel over the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s political funds scandal, sources said.

Kishida, the LDP president, concluded that given mounting public criticism against his party, LDP lawmakers implicated in the scandal have no choice but to provide explanations before the Deliberative Council on Political Ethics, the administration sources said.

However, it remains to be seen whether key figures, such as senior leaders of the LDP’s largest Abe faction, will appear because they can decline to attend, the sources said.

While former accounting officials of the Abe, Nikai and Kishida factions and three Abe faction lawmakers who received large amounts of unreported political funds from their factions were charged, most recipients have not faced any criminal responsibility.

Criticism is growing because it is still unclear why the Abe faction systemically did not list portions of revenues from fund-raising parties on political fund reports or how the unreported money was used.

Kishida will soon instruct senior LDP officials to schedule a council session with the opposition parties, the sources said.

“We cannot say that those involved have fulfilled their responsibility for explaining,” Kishida told an associate. “The fate of the entire party is at stake.”

Four opposition parties, including the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, agreed on Feb. 13 to call for holding a session of the Deliberative Council on Political Ethics to hear from LDP lawmakers involved in the scandal.

They have demanded that senior Abe faction leaders, such as former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, and former LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai, head of the Nikai faction, appear before the council.

Kishida hopes to show that the LDP has fulfilled its political responsibility by holding a council session in addition to conducting a survey of all party lawmakers and hearings of Abe, Nikai and Kishida faction members over unreported political funds.

The Deliberative Council on Political Ethics was created in each of the two Diet chambers through revisions to the Diet Law in 1985 following the Lockheed payoff scandal.

It requires either a request from the individual in question or a proposal from a third or more of council members to hold a hearing. In the latter case, a majority vote by council members in attendance is also necessary.

A summons for attendance is not binding.

Eight lawmakers have appeared before the Lower House council, while the Upper House council has not held a session.

In principle, the council holds sessions behind closed doors.

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