Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks to reporters at the prime minister’s office on Feb. 28. (Takeshi Iwashita)

In a surprise move, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he will attend an open session of the Diet’s ethics panel on a political fund scandal after a hearing was canceled due to his ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s opposition to holding it in public.

“I will attend a session of the Deliberative Council on Political Ethics as the LDP president and fulfill my responsibilities to explain in proceedings open to the media,” Kishida told reporters at the prime minister’s office on Feb. 28.

“To help regain public trust in politics, I expect Diet members with a positive intent will fulfill their responsibilities to explain at the council and on all other occasions.”

Kishida’s strategy of desperation apparently worked.

All five LDP Lower House members, who had offered to appear before the council but were opposed to an open session, did an about-face, party sources said.

“The prime minister’s decision to attend a council session carries decisive weight,” said Ryu Shionoya, a former education minister who heads the Abe faction’s executive board, who is one of the five lawmakers.

Kishida will become the first sitting prime minister to attend a hearing of the Deliberative Council on Political Ethics. His appearance is scheduled for Feb. 29.

“If we let things stand as they are now, we will undermine public confidence in politics and deepen distrust,” he said.

The LDP had agreed with the opposition bloc to hold Lower House council sessions on Feb. 28-29, in principle, about the scandal in which revenues from LDP factions’ fund-raising parties were kept off the books.

But the hearing set for Feb. 28 was canceled after Shionoya and others on Feb. 27 opposed an open session.

The LDP proposed to opposition parties on Feb. 27 that a council session be first held for two of the five lawmakers who were amenable to an open hearing.

They are former economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who served as secretary-general of the Abe faction, and Ryota Takeda, secretary-general of the Nikai faction.

In principle, the council holds sessions behind closed doors, but one can be held in public if a lawmaker facing allegations of wrongdoing agrees to it. 

The LDP proposed a “partially open” session where Diet members and reporters sit in, but no TV cameras are allowed in during the proceedings.

The opposition parties began considering accepting the proposal although they had called for a “completely open” session that can be televised.

But Shionoya, former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno and Tsuyoshi Takagi, former chairman of the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee, who have called for a closed session, opposed the LDP proposal for a partially open hearing.

The three lawmakers all belong to the Abe faction, the largest in the LDP.

Their opposition led Nishimura and Takeda to reverse themselves and eventually forced the LDP to retract its proposal.

Eight Lower House members appeared before the council since its formation in 1985. Only one of those eight sessions was held behind closed doors.

Television cameras were allowed in for four sessions.

The Upper House Deliberative Council on Political Ethics held an opening session on the political fund scandal on Feb. 27.

The opposition parties called for attendance of all 32 LDP Upper House members who failed to list revenues from their factions’ fund-raising parties on their political fund reports.

Hiroshige Seko, former secretary-general of the LDP’s Upper House caucus and a senior leader of the Abe faction, had said he intends to speak before the council.

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