(Tokyo) Four Japanese ministers resigned Thursday after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced the day before that he wanted to face a vast financial fraud scandal which is shaking the ruling party.
“I have submitted my resignation to the prime minister,” Mr. Kishida’s right-hand man, the secretary general and government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno, declared Thursday morning, referring to the suspicions he himself is the subject of.
Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura, Minister of Internal Affairs Junji Suzuki and Minister of Agriculture Ichiro Miyashita also resigned, along with five vice ministers and other officials. , he clarified.
“Public distrust is directed towards me regarding political funds, which leads to distrust of the government. As an investigation is underway, I thought I should set the record straight,” Mr. Nishimura told reporters earlier.
According to the Japanese press, prosecutors are investigating suspected fraud targeting dozens of members of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD, conservative right) led by Mr. Kishida, a political group that has governed the country almost without interruption since its founding in 1955.
These members of the PLD are suspected, according to several media, of having failed to declare the equivalent of several million euros collected through the sale of tickets for fundraising evenings, and which the party would then have paid to them.
Investigators are said to be particularly interested in members of the largest internal faction of the party led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated last year. Its members would have received some 500 million yen (3.2 million euros) over a period of five years until 2022.
Unpopular “fireball”
Judging “extremely regrettable that the situation has aroused distrust among the population”, Mr. Kishida, 66, promised on Wednesday to “turn into a ball of fire to restore confidence in the government”, announcing that he wanted to “proceed quickly” to new appointments Thursday.
The Prime Minister who came to power in the fall of 2021, already unpopular before the gradual revelation by the media of this new scandal for several weeks, is now only supported by 23% of voters according to a survey published Monday by the television channel public NHK.
This affair has further “considerably weakened public support for the LDP and the Kishida government,” said Naofumi Fujimura, professor of political science at Kobe University (west).
Voters “express their concern about the scandal and the perceived lack of responsibility of political leaders,” he added, interviewed by AFP.
However, it is unlikely that this will result in political change in Japan, “especially considering the low popularity in polls of opposition political parties”, according to Mr. Fujimura.
All the ministers who are to be replaced belong to the “Abe faction”, although the scandal would also affect members of Mr. Kishida’s group, according to local media.
Even before this scandal, Mr. Kishida’s popularity rating was already weighed down by other areas of discontent among the Japanese, including persistent inflation and the fall in the yen which are weakening the purchasing power of households, despite his announcement on last month of a massive new fiscal stimulus plan.
The prime minister can theoretically stay in power until 2025, but some analysts speculate on the possible calling of early elections before an internal vote in the PLD next year which could prove very difficult for him.