See no evil: A slush fund is revealed in Japan
The Economist: 18 May 2010
(1) 70 percent of Japanese citizens trust the cont...ent of Newspaper/Magazine/TV while only 20 percent of US Citizens do the same. Since media credibility is such high in Japan, public opinion may be easily manipulated thru these media. (from Newsweek Japan)
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(2) 2 years ago, LDP established an organization called Jimin Net Suppoters Club. Its members are consists of some LDP policy makers, media experts from big private companies and 15,000 voluntary staffs from citizens. They monitor the internet opinion about LDP politicians/policy, request to delete or object criticism, and analyze the opinions for how to promote their members/policy. Some doubt if they are also agitating or manipulating public opinion. (from the blog of a legal scholar)
IN BRITAIN, after the Daily Telegraph broke the story last year that members of parliament had blatantly fiddled expenses, all the media had a field day. In Japan details are leaking out of a large secret fund kept in a black box near the prime minister's office that for decades has been used to curry political favours, including, it is said, among journalists and television commentators. Tellingly, the Japanese media is reacting to the scandal like the three wise monkeys of Nikko: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
The existence of the slush fund has long been known to insiders. But details of its size and the way it was spent were unknown to the public until Hiromu Nonaka, a former chief cabinet secretary, revealed last month that from 1998-99 he spent up to ¥70m ($600,000 at the exchange rate of the time) a month from his secret little piggy bank. That included ¥10m to the prime minister, ¥10m to politicians in the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and more scattered among political commentators and opposition-party members, including those going on trips to North Korea.
Mr Nonaka, who is 84, says he made the confession because he did not want to carry the secret to the grave about what he rightly refers to as taxpayers' money. But he may also have been making mischief for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which drove the LDP from power last year. It has since come to light that the new government of Yukio Hatoyama, elected on a platform of transparency and accountability, has been dipping into the cabinet office's slush fund as freely as its LDP predecessors.
On May 14th Hirofumi Hirano, Mr Hatoyama's chief cabinet secretary, confirmed, in answer to a largely unreported parliamentary question by the Japanese Communist Party, that he had withdrawn ¥360m ($3.8m) from the fund between September and March, and spent all but ¥16m. He claimed to have returned the unused portion to the exchequer. But, he also said, for the time being he did not intend to disclose what the money was spent on, nor did he expect to stop using the pot.
Mr Hirano also appeared reluctant to investigate the outgoing LDP administration led by Taro Aso, which raided the fund last year just before it handed over power to Mr Hatoyama. Two days after the election, and two weeks before leaving office, it withdrew an impressive ¥250m.
Some people might shrug off the fund as part of the old Japanese tradition of gift-giving, admittedly involving some pretty generous presents. Mr Hirano says money is necessary to gather information “for the benefit of the nation”. But for a government that has long promised to dig up the “buried treasure” hidden in government accounts in order to improve shaky public finances, it is extraordinary that it, too, is taking such brazen advantage of this darkest of slush funds. Just as extraordinary, not to mention suspicious, is the impressive silence from most of the powerful mass media. More evidence, if it were needed, of its central role in Japan's longstanding political dysfunction.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2010/05/slush_fund_revealed_japan
The Economist: 18 May 2010
The below is an old article from The Economist.
Hiromu Nonaka, a retired prominent figure of LDP (a leading party in Japan), confessed that when he was a chief cabinet secretary, it was a regular custom for Prime Minister Office to gift the secret money to journalists and television commentators, asking for favourable comments on their party.
.
The other information from the related Japanese articles :
Hiromu Nonaka, a retired prominent figure of LDP (a leading party in Japan), confessed that when he was a chief cabinet secretary, it was a regular custom for Prime Minister Office to gift the secret money to journalists and television commentators, asking for favourable comments on their party.
.
The other information from the related Japanese articles :
(1) 70 percent of Japanese citizens trust the cont...ent of Newspaper/Magazine/TV while only 20 percent of US Citizens do the same. Since media credibility is such high in Japan, public opinion may be easily manipulated thru these media. (from Newsweek Japan)
..
(2) 2 years ago, LDP established an organization called Jimin Net Suppoters Club. Its members are consists of some LDP policy makers, media experts from big private companies and 15,000 voluntary staffs from citizens. They monitor the internet opinion about LDP politicians/policy, request to delete or object criticism, and analyze the opinions for how to promote their members/policy. Some doubt if they are also agitating or manipulating public opinion. (from the blog of a legal scholar)
........................................................................................................
IN BRITAIN, after the Daily Telegraph broke the story last year that members of parliament had blatantly fiddled expenses, all the media had a field day. In Japan details are leaking out of a large secret fund kept in a black box near the prime minister's office that for decades has been used to curry political favours, including, it is said, among journalists and television commentators. Tellingly, the Japanese media is reacting to the scandal like the three wise monkeys of Nikko: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
The existence of the slush fund has long been known to insiders. But details of its size and the way it was spent were unknown to the public until Hiromu Nonaka, a former chief cabinet secretary, revealed last month that from 1998-99 he spent up to ¥70m ($600,000 at the exchange rate of the time) a month from his secret little piggy bank. That included ¥10m to the prime minister, ¥10m to politicians in the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and more scattered among political commentators and opposition-party members, including those going on trips to North Korea.
Mr Nonaka, who is 84, says he made the confession because he did not want to carry the secret to the grave about what he rightly refers to as taxpayers' money. But he may also have been making mischief for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which drove the LDP from power last year. It has since come to light that the new government of Yukio Hatoyama, elected on a platform of transparency and accountability, has been dipping into the cabinet office's slush fund as freely as its LDP predecessors.
On May 14th Hirofumi Hirano, Mr Hatoyama's chief cabinet secretary, confirmed, in answer to a largely unreported parliamentary question by the Japanese Communist Party, that he had withdrawn ¥360m ($3.8m) from the fund between September and March, and spent all but ¥16m. He claimed to have returned the unused portion to the exchequer. But, he also said, for the time being he did not intend to disclose what the money was spent on, nor did he expect to stop using the pot.
Mr Hirano also appeared reluctant to investigate the outgoing LDP administration led by Taro Aso, which raided the fund last year just before it handed over power to Mr Hatoyama. Two days after the election, and two weeks before leaving office, it withdrew an impressive ¥250m.
Some people might shrug off the fund as part of the old Japanese tradition of gift-giving, admittedly involving some pretty generous presents. Mr Hirano says money is necessary to gather information “for the benefit of the nation”. But for a government that has long promised to dig up the “buried treasure” hidden in government accounts in order to improve shaky public finances, it is extraordinary that it, too, is taking such brazen advantage of this darkest of slush funds. Just as extraordinary, not to mention suspicious, is the impressive silence from most of the powerful mass media. More evidence, if it were needed, of its central role in Japan's longstanding political dysfunction.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2010/05/slush_fund_revealed_japan
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