Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during an interview at the prime minister’s office on Oct. 12. (Masaaki Kobayashi)

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he will consider appointing scandal-tainted politicians to government and party posts if they are elected in the Lower House election this month.

He was referring, in an Oct. 12 exclusive interview with The Asahi Shimbun, to lawmakers punished by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party over unreported political funds. 

“(They may be appointed) if they are the right person in the right place,” Ishiba said. “(It will depend on) how much support they win in their constituencies and how people generally assess them.”

The LDP decided to exclude 12 of its members who failed to report proceeds from fund-raising parties from the party ticket in the Oct. 27 election.

However, Ishiba said they may receive LDP endorsements if they are re-elected.

“We may take them back into the fold of our party if they receive a verdict of the people with whom sovereign power resides,” he said.

Ishiba said the LDP’s goal of securing a majority of 465 Lower House seats with the junior coalition partner Komeito includes the lawmakers who may be endorsed after the election.

When asked whether he will resign if the two parties fail to win 233 seats, the prime minister only said he will “make an utmost effort” to achieve the goal.

Ishiba has previously made critical comments about the Abe administration, which lasted for seven years and eight months after the LDP returned to power in 2012.

The administration incurred public distrust over its roles in scandals surrounding Moritomo Gakuen and the Kake Educational Institution, as well as its connections with the Unification Church, now formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

When asked whether he will continue the Abe administration’s policies, Ishiba said he wants to “properly respond to” issues that left many voters unsettled.

Still, Ishiba offered no clear answers on whether he intends to take a different approach from his predecessors Yoshihide Suga and Fumio Kishida, who upheld the Abe administration’s mantra.

“I am responsible for (the Abe administration’s policies),” Ishiba said, noting that he served as LDP secretary-general under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and ministers in his Cabinet. “Many people in the LDP want the policies that have been in place to be continued.”

The Asahi Shimbun has published photographs showing Abe apparently meeting with the president of the Unification Church’s Japanese branch in the LDP president’s reception room at the party headquarters immediately prior to the Upper House election in 2013.

The photos were taken before a public furor erupted over the organization’s shady practices and close ties with the political establishment that triggered an LDP investigation.

However, Ishiba said he has “no grounds” for the LDP to mount a new investigation into the Unification Church issues “as long as it is not known what was discussed” at the 2013 meeting.

But he did say the effectiveness of Abe’s economic policies, known as “Abenomics,” need to be re-examined.

“We cannot tell whether policies will continue to be effective even if they were effective at one point,” he said.

(This article was written by Political News Editor Kyohei Matsuda, Junichiro Ishii and Kohei Morioka.)

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