Japan’s defense minister quits amid cover-up fallout
Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada resigned on Friday amid an alleged coverup of internal documents, including the daily activities and safety conditions of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force during its United Nations peacekeeping operations in South Sudan.
Accepting Inada’s resignation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized on Friday to the public. Abe said Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida would add the defense portfolio to his duties until a new defense chief is appointed.
At ad hoc meetings of Japan’s parliament on Monday and Tuesday, Abe turned down opposition lawmakers’ demand to fire Inada.
The opposition had asked Inada to clarify the cover-up. When the Defense Ministry was asked in December to disclose the logs covering the Self-Defense Forces’ operations in South Sudan in July 2016, it said the data had been deleted. Digital data was subsequently found stored in not only the offices of the Joint Staff, but also those of the Ground Self-Defense Force.
The SDF’s overseas operation is a sensitive issue in Japan, given the country’s pacifist Constitution. The SDF were authorized to use weapons under certain conditions in South Sudan. Japanese media have reported that SDF officials had tried to hide the logs because they showed a worsening security situation in the African country. Japan ended its participation in the peacekeeping operation in May, but it said the withdrawal was not related to security concerns in South Sudan.
Inada’s resignation came just several days before Abe is likely to reshuffle his scandal-hit Cabinet next week in an attempt to rebuild public support.
According to Kyodo News, to avoid missteps and gaffes that have led to plunging approval ratings for his Cabinet, Abe may pick one of the former defense ministers, such as Yoshimasa Hayashi, Itsunori Onodera, Gen Nakatani or Yasukazu Hamada, to be Inada’s successor.
Though having no defense portfolio, Toshimitsu Motegi, who is chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s policy research council and was economy, trade and industry minister, may also be a candidate for the next defense minister, it said.
The Defense Ministry’s internal probe has cleared Inada’s role in the cover-up scandal but found that other officials from the ministry and SDF had violated the law on information disclosure.
Toshiya Okabe, the GSDF’s chief of staff, announced on Thursday that he was stepping down.
The resignation of Inada, an Abe protege who shares his conservative views and had been suggested as a possible future premier, will deal double blows to the Abe administration and the LDP, the conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun said.