Two weeks after it was held in the Lower House, the Deliberative Council on Political Ethics was finally convened in the Upper House on March 14 to question Diet members over the political fund-raising scandal.

But the key Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker who attended the session was frustratingly evasive, denying knowing about unreported funds amassed by the ruling party’s faction once led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Hiroshige Seko, former secretary-general of the LDP’s Upper House caucus, offered no satisfactory answers to questions concerning the scandal that revolves around political funds garnered through fund-raising parties that were not duly declared.

The ethics council’s failure to uncover crucial facts about the scandal clearly shows the limitations in its investigative ability due to the fact that Diet members answering questions before the panel face no risk of being charged with perjury.

If the LDP is serious about uncovering the truth about the slush funds, it should agree to allow the Diet to summon its members involved to speak before the Diet as sworn witnesses.

At the March 14 session, Seko, one of the “Group of Five” political heavyweights from the Abe faction, emphasized that he had absolutely no involvement in the faction's accounting.

Although he admitted having long known that the income from fund-raising party ticket sales exceeding the quotas assigned to individual members was returned to them, Seko repeated that he did not know such income was not reported in the mandatory political funding reports until the issue came to light.

In the years when Upper House elections were held, it has been reported that in the Abe faction, all income collected through fund-raising parties by Upper House members facing re-election was fully returned to the politicians without reporting it.

These secret funding tactics inevitably raise the suspicion that the money was used for election campaigns.

Seko, who had been serving as the leader of the faction's group of Upper House members since 2016, stated, “It was decided without any consultation with me, completely on their own.”

It is difficult to believe that the politician responsible for managing the team of the Upper House faction members had no knowledge of this operation.

In the Lower House ethics council session on March 1, the faction members’ answers to questions did not match and were ambiguous regarding the circumstances of how the fund return system, once instructed to be abolished by then faction chairman Abe, was later reinstated.

Seko’s explanation about this matter drew special attention as he regularly participated in discussions among faction executives at the time.

But he adamantly denied that the reinstatement was decided in any meeting he attended, saying, “I myself want to know who decided it,” in a surprisingly detached and noncommittal manner.

Following Seko, Upper House member Shoji Nishida from the Abe faction faced questions about this mystery.

Nishida said, “Even if the faction leaders did not know at the time, they had the duty to investigate and report,” a reasonable statement.

Seko acknowledged knowing about the return system within the faction but claimed he was unaware that he was also receiving returned funds himself. He said he could not detect the flow of such funds since they were managed “off the books” of the financial reports.

He has often stressed his strict stance in dealing with political funds, but his commitment to securing the transparency and accountability of funds has turned out to be disappointingly less than his claims.

Opposition parties called for the questioning of all the 32 Upper House members who had unreported funds, and the decision to hold a council session was made in unanimous support of all parties, including the LDP.

However, only Seko, Nishida and former Olympic minister Seiko Hashimoto agreed to attend the session.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s vow to urge all LDP lawmakers involved to fulfill their “accountability” sounds hollow.

It has been decided that former education minister Hakubun Shimomura, another senior member of the Abe faction, will attend a Lower House ethics council session on March 18. Most key questions about the scandal remain unanswered.

The Diet must carry out its critical role in making those responsible fulfill their accountability and getting to the bottom of the scandal.

--The Asahi Shimbun, March 15