Tuesday 14th December, 07:00 AM JST
TOKYO —
The Democratic Party of Japan failed to decide Monday whether to put to a vote a decision on summoning Ichiro Ozawa, a power broker in the ruling party, to a parliamentary ethics panel to have him testify over a political funds scandal involving his political body.
The DPJ, experiencing growing internal conflicts, convened a meeting of party executives to discuss how to address the scandal for which Ozawa faces indictment, but they sidestepped a decision on whether to take a vote by the panel over his possible testimony.
As a result, DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada was entrusted by other executives to deal with the matter. According to party sources, Okada asked Ozawa to hold talks with him in the next couple of days.
Attention is now focused on whether Ozawa, a former DPJ chief, will meet with Okada.
Okada said at a news conference that the executives agreed he will again request that Ozawa appear before the House of Representatives’ political ethics committee on a voluntary basis.
They also agreed that the DPJ will decide to have him appear before the panel if Ozawa does not comply with the request.
‘‘Based on the two agreements, I have been entrusted,’’ Okada said.
Ozawa, who lost to Prime Minister Naoto Kan in the party leadership election in September, has refused to appear before the ethics panel, arguing he has done nothing wrong and will say what he needs to say in court.
‘‘I believe it would be better for the party and himself if he could carry out his promise to the public,’’ Kan told reporters in the evening, as during the presidential election campaign Ozawa pledged to explain the scandal in parliament if needed.
Prior to the meeting, some 35 DPJ lawmakers backing Ozawa adopted a resolution criticizing the executives. They said a move to lay the groundwork for Ozawa’s testimony is ‘‘a reckless act,’’ only causing more trouble within the party.
It remains uncertain whether the DPJ can pave the way for Ozawa’s appearance before the panel, given that some heavyweights have voiced objections to summoning the kingpin, who leads the biggest intraparty group.
The meeting took place at a time when Kan is grappling with falling support ratings, with recent media surveys showing they are partly due to perceived lack of leadership in dealing with the scandal.
The DPJ suffered a humiliating setback in an Ibaraki prefectural assembly election on Sunday, when only six out of 24 candidates fielded by the party were able to win seats, while 33 from the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party secured seats.
Okada is hoping to convene the ethics panel ahead of the 150-day ordinary Diet session, due to begin as early as mid-January, in which the government needs to pass the fiscal 2011 budget and other important bills by winning enough support also from opposition parties.
The LDP and New Komeito, the second-biggest opposition party, are in favor of having a vote on whether to demand that Ozawa explain the allegations against him before the ethics panel.
But even if the panel votes to hold a hearing for Ozawa, the decision will be nonbinding and it will still be up to him whether to attend.
Some DPJ executives have said they will not rule out the possibility of penalizing Ozawa if he continues to ignore requests to explain the scandal to parliament.
Depending on Ozawa’s behavior, he could be asked to leave the party.
Ozawa, often dubbed ‘‘the shadow shogun’’ of Japanese politics, is credited with the DPJ’s rise to power in 2009. The 68-year-old became DPJ president in April 2006 but stepped down in May last year, prior to the House of Representatives election, after his state-paid aide was arrested and indicted over dubious political contributions from a construction company.
He later held the DPJ’s No. 2 post of secretary general but resigned in early June this year, together with Kan’s predecessor Yukio Hatoyama, due to fears over lackluster public support for the party ahead of the House of Councillors election, in which the ruling coalition suffered a stinging defeat.
He will be indicted in the near future because a judicial panel formed by randomly picked citizens, which was in charge of reviewing an earlier decision by prosecutors not to charge him over the case, concluded in September that prosecution is appropriate.
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