LDP Not to Endorse Ex-Abe Faction Execs in General Election

Tokyo, Oct. 6 (Jiji Press)--In a policy shift, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Sunday unveiled a plan not to give his ruling Liberal Democratic Party's official endorsement in the upcoming general election to some of the party members slapped with in-house penalties in April over the party's slush fund scandal.

At least six people, including former executives of the LDP faction once led by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, such as Koichi Hagiuda, former chief of the LDP's Policy Research Council, will likely be denied party endorsement in the Oct. 27 election for the House of Representatives, the all-important lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament.

The Abe group is at the center of the scandal, in which part of revenue from sales of tickets for fundraising parties held by some LDP factions was kicked back to member lawmakers. The kickbacks were not recorded in political fund reports and thus became slush funds.

Ishiba also showed a plan to ban all party lawmakers who failed to report such funds in political fund statements from running simultaneously in constituencies and for the proportional representation system in the Lower House election.

The prime minister, also LDP president, agreed on the plans with LDP Secretary-General Hiroshi Moriyama and Shinjiro Koizumi, head of the party's Election Strategy Committee, at a meeting held at the LDP's headquarters in Tokyo.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]