Japan subsidies scandal forces minister to quit after one week
Japan’s agriculture minister resigned today only a week after his appointment because of a scandal involving misuse of farm subsidies.
He is the fourth Cabinet minister to step down in the past year.
Agriculture Minister Takehiko Endo, who took office in a Cabinet reshuffle aimed at strengthening a scandal-scarred government, submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this morning and it was accepted.
The scandal was a fresh blow to Abe’s shaky government as the prime minister struggles to regain public support.
Abe reshuffled his Cabinet last week following a defeat for the ruling coalition in July 29 elections for the upper house of parliament.
“The series of scandals has added to the people’s distrust,” Endo told reporters in announcing his resignation, acknowledging “inappropriate” conduct. “Again, I apologise for not having been able to achieve anything.”
Endo, Abe’s third agriculture minister in the past four months, admitted on Saturday that a farm cooperative he headed had received government subsidies by exaggerating weather damage to the 1999 grape harvest.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Kaoru Yosano defended Abe’s appointment of Endo, saying the government had gone through a strict selection process when choosing Cabinet members.
“The screening system this time was the most extensive in postwar Japanese history. We checked all the documents that we could obtain,” Yosano told reporters. “But we can’t know everything.”
Yosano said Masatoshi Wakabayashi, a former environment minister, would replace Endo.
Vice Foreign Minister Yukiko Sakamoto also stepped down today after acknowledging that her support group faked funding reports in 2004/05.
The new scandals hit Abe’s government just as it was recovering from elections in which the opposition took control of the upper house of parliament. Support for Abe had jumped some 10% following the naming of a new Cabinet last Monday.
Abe, at 52 Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister, has been dogged by money scandals since taking office nearly a year ago.
His first agriculture minister, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, killed himself in May amid allegations he misused public money. His successor, Norihiko Akagi, resigned in August in a separate scandal. Two other ministers have also had to quit Abe’s Cabinet.
The resurgent opposition declared the Abe government untrustworthy, and called for snap elections for the powerful lower house of parliament, which chooses the prime minister. A defeat in that chamber would topple Abe.
While Abe had initially stood by his ministers in previous scandals, he apparently has decided it wiser to force disgraced Cabinet members to quit. After forming his new Cabinet last Monday, he announced that anyone caught in accounting scandals would have to step down.
The allegations against Endo were particularly damaging. He admitted on Saturday that his farm cooperative had received 1.15 million yen (£5,000) in government subsidies by exaggerating crop damage due to weather.
Endo initially apologised and quit as cooperative head, but said he would not resign from the Cabinet. But he reportedly changed his mind after a series of meetings yesterday among LDP heavyweights and Chief Cabinet Secretary Kaoru Yosano, who Kyodo said pressed Endo to quit.
Today, he offered contradicting statements about why he had not warned Abe about the potential scandal before taking office, saying first that he wasn’t aware of the problem, and then later saying that he didn’t have time.
