Japan Press Weekly

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2017 July 26 - August 1 [POLITICS]

LDP’s refusal to call ex-DM to off-session Diet meeting is unacceptable: JCP Koike

“It’s totally out of the question. Her resignation is turning out to be just another cover-up attempt.” By saying this, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira criticized the Liberal Democratic Party for refusing to have former Defense Minister Inada Tomomi take the stand.

Inada was driven to step down from her position as a Cabinet minister on July 28 for the concealment of “daily reports” kept by Ground SDF peacekeepers in the UN PKO mission in South Sudan.

JCP Koike at a press conference held on July 31 in the Diet building said that a special taskforce of the MoD Inspector General’s Office did not answer the question as to whether Inada and Prime Minister Abe Shinzo had known about the keeping of the on-the-site journal hidden from the public. He added, “That’s why we have to hold off-session Diet meetings to question Inada face to face.”

Prior to his press conference, Democratic Party Diet Commission Chair Yamai Kazunori met with his LDP counterpart, Takeshita Wataru, and demanded that Inada be summoned to testify over the allegations before Diet committee meetings. However, Takeshita, by asserting that resignation from the Cabinet “is the hardest way of taking responsibility,” refused to have Inada appear in the Diet meetings.

To this, Koike said, “It’s actually the easiest way of escaping from responsibility.”

Koike also referred to a remark Inada made during her farewell ceremony held on the same day in which she called for openness in the Defense Ministry and the SDF. Koike said, “Inada herself has not been open in the least. The nature of the Abe Cabinet and the PM Office are far from embracing openness.”