Japanese prosecutors questioned ruling Democratic Party kingpin Ichiro Ozawa for more than four hours yesterday over a funding scandal that is dimming the party’s prospects in a mid-year election, local media said.
The scandal ensnaring Ozawa, the Democrats’ key campaign strategist, has eroded support for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government ahead of the poll for parliament’s upper house, risking policy stalemate in the long term.
The Democrats need an upper house majority to reduce reliance on small coalition partners and enable them to pass bills smoothly. The party swept to power last year promising to reduce bureaucrats’ control of policy, cut waste and boost consumer spending power to help the weak economy.
REAL POWER
Ozawa, who holds the key post of party secretary-general and is widely seen as the real power behind Hatoyama’s administration, came under fire after prosecutors arrested three aides on suspicion of improper reporting of political donations.
He has denied any intentional wrongdoing and he was not legally obliged to respond to the prosecutors’ request that he answer questions about the case.
Japanese media said Ozawa would likely tell prosecutors the money came from his own and family bank accounts, but prosecutors suspect construction firms seeking public contracts may have been involved.
Yesterday Ozawa denied receiving illegal donations from construction firms.
“I have never received illegal money and I am sure neither have my office staffers,” said Ozawa in a statement released after questioning by prosecutors.
Some newspapers said prosecutors are probing the possibility that Ozawa himself was involved in illegal activities.
Hatoyama has backed Ozawa, credited with engineering his party’s historic win in an election for the more powerful lower house last August that brought it to power, and said he hoped the party No. 2 would have a chance to prove his innocence soon.
FRAGILE
This week, opposition parties grilled Hatoyama about the scandal during parliamentary debate on an extra budget for the year to March 31. But the bill is now expected to be enacted next week because the opposition would risk a public backlash if it delayed the steps, aimed at bolstering Japan’s fragile economy.
Ozawa, who left the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1993 and spent the years after striving to defeat his former colleagues, has been a double-edged sword for the Democrats.
His indisputable electioneering skills are seen as important to winning the upper house election, but his image as an old-style political fixer is denting the popularity of the party, which took power pledging to sweep away politics based on vested interests and collusion between lawmakers and bureaucrats.
Some analysts say Ozawa, who resigned from the party’s top post last year over a separate scandal, will have to step down this time, too, but may not decide to do so for a while.
Despite slipping voter support for the government, the LDP has not recovered much ground since being ousted from power in the August election, which ended its almost unbroken rule of more than five decades.
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