Editorial
Ozawa may have dodged prosecution, but hasn't dodged culpability
The scandal surrounding a land purchase by ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa's fund-raising body Rikuzan-kai is far from being solved.
The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office indicted two former secretaries to Ozawa and a current secretary for violating the Law to Regulate Money Used for Political Activities. However, it decided not to indict Ozawa for lack of hard evidence of his involvement in the case. Following the move, Ozawa declared that he will stay on as DPJ secretary-general.
One of the secretaries, House of Representatives member Tomohiro Ishikawa, has admitted that he deliberately omitted massive transactions related to the land deal in Rikuzan-kai's political fund reports.
"I didn't want to record the flow of money in the report in a way which revealed Ozawa's personal money was used," Ishikawa was quoted as telling investigators.
In other words, this is an incident involving Ozawa personally, and his supervisory and political responsibility is extremely grave.
Attention should be paid to changes in Ozawa's story. In autumn last year, Ozawa stated that money borrowed from a bank was used to buy a land lot in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo. However, he now claims that his personal money was used for the purchase.
"The transaction was reported by the news media, so I deemed it necessary to clearly state that my personal money was used," Ozawa said. Does that mean he would not have provided an accurate explanation if the case had not been reported?
Ozawa has emphasized that he left all the accounting and clerical work to his secretaries. If Ozawa has never checked Rikuzan-kai's political funding reports, he should be criticized for being irresponsible as a politician.
At a news conference in 2007, Ozawa released a document confirming that the land concerned belongs to the fund-raising body, and not Ozawa himself. However, suspicions have emerged as a result of prosecutors' investigation into the case that the document may have been compiled shortly before the news conference with a falsified date.
It is obvious that Ozawa has failed to fulfill his accountability for the incident, and should testify before the Diet over the case as demanded by opposition parties.
At the same time, numerous members of the general public are questioning the way that the investigation is being conducted. The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office did not disclose whether it has deemed that the money used to buy the land included secret donations from a general contractor, which Ishikawa denied. Even though prosecutors may intend to disclose this information during the trial, they should have provided a clear explanation now, as it is the focal point in the investigation.
Calls urging Ozawa to step down could surface within the DPJ if public criticism of the DPJ continues to rise prior to the House of Councillors election this summer. However, more serious is DPJ members' lack of calls for an end to politicians' money scandals, which have been repeated for many years.
Many members of the public voted for the DPJ in the hope that it will bring about changes, including an end to money politics. Before criticizing the investigation into the case, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and the DPJ as a whole should calmly consider their political responsibility for the public's declining confidence in them.
(Mainichi Japan) February 5, 2010