Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, attends the opening ceremony of a Tokyo outlet selling products from Ishikawa Prefecture along with Ishikawa Governor Hiroshi Hase, center, and Yoshiro Mori, a former prime minister. (Shinkai Kawabe)

Yoshiro Mori, a prime minister who was in power about a quarter of a century ago and is 86 years old, is now in the crosshairs of a push by the opposition camp to get to the bottom of a slush fund scandal involving factions of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

This is because investigative panels in both houses of the Diet are getting nowhere in their efforts to unravel how huge amounts of money were accumulated through fund-raising parties.

The opposition parties are pinning their hopes on calling on lawmakers to testify before the Diet as sworn witnesses, a tactic aimed at exposing them to the charge of perjury depending on how they respond to questions.

But the LDP is hardly likely to agree to the arrangement without a fight.

To date, it has reluctantly allowed eight lawmakers to appear before the deliberative councils on political ethics of the two chambers even though the opposition wanted to question a total of 83.

The opposition camp is also targeting Mori, who served as prime minister from 2000 to 2001, because he led what was once the Abe faction decades ago.

The LDP factions caught up in the money scandal earlier announced they were disbanding as a result, a decision that is further complicating opposition efforts to unravel the money in politics issue that has dogged the LDP almost since its creation in 1955.

Several lawmakers who were once members of the Abe faction, named after Shinzo Abe, a veteran politician who served twice as prime minister and was gunned down in Nara city in 2022, said the practice of returning accumulated money from fund-raising parties back to members began about two decades ago.

Mori led the faction off and on between 1998 and 2006, making him a prime candidate for questioning by the opposition.

Current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida admitted as much during a March 15 Upper House Budget Committee session, saying Mori with his extensive knowledge of LDP affairs would probably have to appear at future deliberative council sessions.

He said a decision would be made after the session of the Lower House Deliberative Council on Political Ethics scheduled for March 18 when Hakubun Shimomura, another former top executive in the former Abe faction, will be questioned.

(This article was written by Takahiro Okubo and Yuta Ogi.)

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