On December 16, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun published an editorial entitled "Political Funds Should Be Thoroughly Transparent". The following is an excerpt from the article:
Being in the legislature of the National Assembly, but violating the "Political Funds Regulation Act" and trying to misappropriate the funds for activities is undoubtedly a dishonest move by the people.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is testing whether it can exert its ability to purify itself.
Affected by the Liberal Democratic Party's ** faction suspected of using political fund-raising banquets to eat kickbacks, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida removed four cabinet ministers and five vice ministers, including Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Matsuno.
1. Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasunori Nishimura.
The issue of political funding has caused Kishida** to be in trouble. When choosing a new cabinet member, I think we will pay attention to these two points: whether they are calm and unhurried in the defenseWhether or not it has been involved in a political funding scandal in the past.
It is said that the ** faction had instructed that the portion exceeding the quota for the sale of banquet tickets should be returned to the members of the council in the form of cash, and would not be recorded in the income and expenditure report. Expenditures to parliamentarians are also not recorded in the report of income and expenditure on the factional side.
If a faction raises money at a banquet and returns part of the amount to the councillors, but does not record the income and expenditure in the income and expenditure report, it violates the Political Funds Regulation Act (which is a case of non-recording and false record).
The second-order faction and the Kishida faction were also suspected of falsely reporting banquet income, although the amount was less than that of the ** faction. If Kishida says that the issue of political funding is a "party-wide issue," the LDP should conduct a thorough investigation and explain it to the people.
It has been learned that there are often omissions or mistakes in the income and expenditure reports of members of the ruling and opposition parties. If an error is discovered and corrected in a timely manner, it will not be prosecuted in some cases. However, the situation is very different if the amount misrecorded or omitted is large, or if it is intentional and egregious in nature.
The Political Funds Regulation Act stipulates that failure to record or falsification of records is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to 1 million yen. Even if a fine is imposed, the person concerned will be subject to the suspension of citizenship and the loss of citizenship status. Mistakes or omissions should not be dismissed as formal errors regardless of the seriousness of the consequences.
In light of this issue, it is said that discussions are underway within the LDP to abolish factions, ban factional gatherings altogether, and fundamentally revise the Political Funds Regulation Act. In the past, whenever there was a political and monetary issue, there were people who advocated the dissolution of the faction, but it never materialized.
The factions still exert influence in the cabinet and political party personnel today, and raise money by holding banquets. Now is the time to reconsider the question of how political parties should use their political funds. There is a cost to political activities, but the way in which political funds are raised and used must be fair and transparent. (Compiled by Ma Xiaoyun).