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The recently reshuffled Cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has had its very foundations rocked Monday, following the doubly-whammy of two of the five female ministers he ushered into his inner coterie one month ago both stepping down the day due to money scandals.
Abe's Cabinet has been relatively scandal-free for the best part of two years since he took office in December 2012, without anyone resigning forcibly or otherwise. Monday's resignation of the ministers has dealt a massive blow to the prime minister, as the inclusion of more women in his Cabinet has partly ensured relatively strong support rates of late. Abe seeks to have women occupy 30 percent of leadership positions by 2020, even while some of his military and foreign-facing policies have been denounced politically and publicly.
Japan's outgoing Justice Minister Midori Matsushima resigned mere hours after the resignation of Trade and Industry Minister Yuko Obuchi. The former stepped down to admit her culpability in violating Japan's election laws, while Obuchi stands accused of misusing funds from her political support groups and other donations.
Abe said at a press briefing earlier Monday that he had accepted the resignations of both women, who were set to become rising stars in his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with Obuchi, 40, in particular, hotly tipped to become a future prime minister, and apologized by saying that he would quickly pick their successors within 24-hours and felt "responsible for appointing them as ministers."
"Knowing what we know about Abe's new picks for his Cabinet and the fact that they're in cahoots with some of Abe's ultra- right perspectives, it was then, perhaps, only a matter of time until the wheels of Abe's Cabinet began to fall off," Kaoru Imori, a renowned local pundit on Asian affairs, told Xinhua.
"After all, Abe's Cabinet was not devoid of money and politics scandals during his first stint as prime minister between 2006 and 2007, and look at all the incidents of improper use of political funds for election campaigns; illicit donations and illegal property purchases that have undone the careers of heavy- hitting politicians here in the past decade alone, let alone the past 50-years."
"Perhaps, for a fleeting moment, we thought that politics here, at least in terms of the law and how political funds use by groups and individuals had cleaned up their act. Apparently not. This political cancer just keeps reappearing," Imori said.
He went on to say that while Obuchi has up until now played the "ignorance" card and hasn't admitted to any wrongdoing, only actually stepping down to "take responsibility" and to "not impede ongoing economic and energy policy" for the affair, the fact of the matter is that her constituency spent funds to the tune of 26 million yen (around 245,600 U.S. dollars) on theater tickets for her supporters in 2010 and 2011, that remained unaccounted for in her political funds files.
Obuchi, however, maintained that she had failed to oversee the exact spending of her support groups, and would endeavor to clear her name following outside probes.
In a disastrous week for the new Cabinet minister, Obuchi also came under fire for a second time once reports started hitting the headlines that her political funding oversight body had spent nearly 3.6 million yen over a five-year period on a design office run by her sister, and a clothing shop run by Obuchi's brother-in- law, since 2008, with the allegations adding further fuel to the fire of her initial financial improprieties.
Obuchi, the daughter of former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, claimed that the money used here was legitimate and had been used within the law, stating that she has "drawn a clear line between public and private matters."
But investigations here are still pending, a representative from here office told the press, without divulging specific, but suggesting that the probe could be a lengthy one.
Obuchi was elected from a single-seat constituency in Gunma Prefecture and joined Abe's government in the Sept. 3 Cabinet reshuffle, as one of the headline-grabbing five female ministers in the prime minister's reshuffled Cabinet.
But the drama continued in the run-up to Monday, with Matsushima, 58, eventually stepping down following allegations she broke Japan's election laws by handing out fans, some of which bore her name, title as justice minister and sound bites of her policies, at festivals near her constituency in Tokyo on numerous occasions, as Takeshi Shina, deputy secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), attested.
Documents submitted by Matsushima's support group to parliament showed that more than 21,000 fans were made at a total cost of 1.74 million yen between 2012 and this year. The main opposition DPJ also filed a criminal complaint against her for using parliament-provided housing while keeping security guards at her private residence in downtown Tokyo.
In the midst of two scandals that will likely dent the prime minister's popularity in the months to come, local media revealed that the support for Abe's cabinet dropped 6.8 percentage points from September to 48.1 percent, according to the latest nationwide news poll conducted on Oct. 18-19.
While the approval rate of the DPJ increased to 8.1 percent from 4.7 percent and will likely continue to improve as the main opposition party has been precisely dissecting and eliminating the weakest aspects of their ruling rivals, which, in line with history, have always concerned money and scandals. "It was only a matter of time before the DPJ started to find their teeth again in the Diet, having been overwhelmed by Abe and his LDP's prominence for so long, and powerless in the face of the enactment of so many bills that went against the grain of both opposition parties and the nation." political analyst Teruhisa Muramatsu told Xinhua.
"While the charges today, in terms of their severity at best are likely to amount to just a nuisance for Abe, it could nevertheless provide further impetus for the public to mistrust Abe's new regime and prevent the prime minister from browbeating opposition parties to the extent he has been and from acting beyond the scope of public discretion," Muramatsu said.
With other women in Abe's Cabinet now also under increasing scrutiny, including Internal Affairs Minister Sanae Takaichi and Minister for Abduction Issue Eriko Yamatani, who have been photographed separately with a prominent Japanese neo-Nazi leader involved with hate speeches against Koreans living in Japan, the time is ripe for opposition parties to step up, push more and redress the massive political power gap in parliament that has allowed the LDP to act with too much impunity, particularly over issues of military, history and territory, with the three being inextricably linked, Muramatsu concluded.
