BY NORIKO AKIYAMA AND HARUKO KAGENISHI, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
2009/4/29
Calls are growing within opposition Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) for the resignation of scandal-tainted Ichiro Ozawa as party leader.
Kozo Watanabe, a top-level party adviser, has called on Ozawa to go quietly.
Watanabe was busy Monday, conferring with party members.
Before the start of the Lower House plenary session, he met with Koichiro Genba, who is close to party Vice President Katsuya Okada, considered by many as the leading candidate to replace Ozawa as party leader should he step down.
Within the Lower House chamber, Watanabe met with Ozawa for a whispered conversation.
After the plenary session was over, Watanabe met in a room in the Diet building with Secretary-General Yukio Hatoyama and said: "It is now no longer acceptable to receive money from construction companies. Even if Ozawa feels he has a responsibility to explain his position, he won't be able to (under the current political climate)."
Ozawa's state-funded aide was arrested March 3 on suspicion of submitting false political fund reports. Donations that originated from a construction company were listed as coming from political organizations that served as dummy fronts for the company.
While 50 days have passed since the arrest, the public does not appear to be in a forgive-and-forget mood. Ozawa's supporters can try to spin Sunday's election of a former Minshuto Lower House member as mayor of Nagoya positively, but public criticism of the party leader has not abated at the local level.
At a meeting with local constituents over the weekend, a midlevel party member said, "If he continues as party leader and remains a target of attacks and Minshuto is unable to take over government, that will be exactly what prosecutors wanted."
At a public speech, another midlevel party member said, "I am fighting to have Ozawa resign as party leader soon."
Older party members who had supported Ozawa are also slowly distancing themselves.
"If he is going to resign, the sooner the better," one member said.
Minshuto officials are hoping the ban on corporate and group donations as well as the proposed ban on relatives succeeding lawmakers will help restore party fortunes.
However, one Minshuto executive said, "The most important political reform move will be to have Ozawa step down."
Party members are also casting a more critical eye on Okada to determine if he is really fit to lead the party in the next Lower House election that must be held by September.
Okada now heads a party body looking into political reform.
When Okada said last week that a grace period of five years should be instituted before a total ban on corporate donations, some younger party members expressed concerns that voters could question how serious Minshuto was about the issue.
(IHT/Asahi: April 29,2009)
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