Opposition heaps pressure on Abe over school scandal
TOKYO: Opposition parties stepped up their offensive against Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday over allegations he tried to influence a government decision to approve the construction of a new department at a university run by a close friend.
The move came a day after Kihei Maekawa, a former top education ministry bureaucrat, confirmed the authenticity of documents indicating Mr Abe was involved in the decision to approve the heavily subsidised construction of a veterinary medicine department at Okayama University of Science.
Renho Murata, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said her party “will thoroughly look into the issue” to determine whether the prime minister’s office improperly influenced the decisionmaking process.
The Democratic Party, the Japanese Communist Party, the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party requested that Mr Maekawa, former vice-minister at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, be summoned to the Diet as a witness, but it was rejected by Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party.
Mr Maekawa, who held the ministry’s highest bureaucratic post between June last year and January, has said he will appear in parliament if summoned.
Mr Abe’s government brushed off the mounting pressure, with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga reiterating at a press conference that the documents in question lacked credibility and education minister Hirokazu Matsuno ruling out a fresh investigation into them by his ministry.
Mr Matsuno said earlier this week the ministry could not confirm the existence of the documents.
The documents, obtained by the Democratic Party and others, recorded what appeared to be exchanges between education ministry and Cabinet Office officials tasked with making decisions regarding a specially deregulated zone in Imabari in Ehime prefecture, western Japan, where the new university department is expected to be established.
Mr Abe’s close friend Kotaro Kake serves as chairman of Kake Educational Institution, which operates Okayama University of Science. The specially deregulated zones, which are subject to less red tape, are part of the Abe administration’s growth strategy.