Japan Press Weekly

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2019 January 30 - February 5 [POLITICS]

Ruling parties refuse to summon witnesses in regard to falsified labor survey data

Amid public criticism over the monthly labor data falsification scandal within the Labor Ministry, the ruling Liberal Democratic and Komei parties on February 4 refused to accept the opposition parties' request to summon witnesses in order to uncover the truth behind the issue.

The Japanese Communist Party, Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and Democratic Party for the People blamed the LDP and Komei for putting a lid on the truth by rejecting the call to summon key figures as unsworn witnesses in the Lower House Budget Committee.

JCP Secretariat Head Koike Akira on the same day held a press conference in the Diet building and pointed out that former senior official of the Labor Ministry Onishi Yasuhiro had been handling the monthly labor survey data since before the manipulation of data was exposed in December last year. Koike added that Onishi is also under a cloud of suspicion regarding the falsification of wage statistics.

Koike said that the rejection to have Onishi directly give testimony in the Diet should be criticized as "placing a gag order on him ".

Past related articles:
> Labor survey allegedly falsified to support Abenomics [January 19 & 22, 2019]
> FY2019 budget plan to be revised to pay unpaid labor insurance benefits due to Labor Ministry’s faulty survey data [January 10&11, 2019]