DPJ executives move to suspend Ozawa's party membership+

TOKYO, Feb. 14 Kyodo -
Executives of the Democratic Party of Japan on Monday moved to suspend the
party membership of former leader Ichiro Ozawa, who has been indicted over a
funds scandal, until after the end of his trial which is expected to begin this
summer or later.
DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada said following the party's executive
meeting that some opposed the punishment but calls for suspending Ozawa's
membership eventually prevailed. The board has now handed the matter to the
party's Standing Officers Council which will meet Tuesday to give the go-ahead
to the punishment.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who attended the ruling party's executive board
meeting, told reporters later that the punitive action is the ''DPJ's way of
putting its foot down'' on the case of Ozawa.
Okada said the Ozawa case ''poses a challenge for us to fulfill our
responsibility as a publicly recognized political party.'' He added the DPJ
decided to go ahead with the punitive action, looking at the gravity over the
indictment of Ozawa, a lawmaker of the House of Representatives.
Okada also said the board took into account Ozawa's refusal to heed calls from
the party to testify over the scandal before a parliamentary ethics panel, as
well as the indictment of his three former secretaries in connection with
falsely reporting his political funds.
Ozawa, a longtime power broker in Japanese politics, was himself indicted in
late January over accounting irregularities involving his political funds body.
Denying any wrongdoing, he has vowed to stay on as a DPJ lawmaker and refused
to testify at the Diet, saying his case will be fought out in court and his
innocence should be proven there.
Okada said the party will decide on whether to extend or revoke the suspension
depending on the outcome of Ozawa's trial.
The maximum period of suspending a member under the party's code of ethics is
six months, but since the party cannot predict how long the trial will last, it
has decided to make an exception by suspending Ozawa's membership until the
court makes a decision on his case, Okada said.
A suspended DPJ politician is not allowed to attend formal party functions and
could fail to get on the party's ticket in elections.
The DPJ had no choice but to begin the process of finalizing punitive action
after Ozawa spurned Kan's call to leave the party voluntarily during their
one-to-one meeting Thursday.
The latest decision by the executives is expected to intensify an already
conspicuous internal rift between anti- and pro-Ozawa DPJ members, at a time
when the Kan administration needs to secure party unity to help it pass the
fiscal 2011 budget and budget-related bills in a divided Diet.
But Okada played down its possible impact on party unity, saying both sides
need to ''make efforts to avoid a rift'' and that the DPJ has a duty to the
public to explain the scandal.
Among the 15 on the DPJ executive board, members close to Ozawa including Azuma
Koshiishi, head of the party's caucus in the upper house, protested that
imposing punishment should wait until after a court ruling but Kan's approval
of the suspension prevailed.
Given that pro-Ozawa lawmakers were present during Monday's executive board
meeting, the punishment is not expected to be overruled during the rest of the
necessary process and will likely receive endorsement from the DPJ's ethics
committee as well as its Standing Officers Council.
The media have been keeping close tabs on how the Kan government, facing low
public support, handles the Ozawa case since it is linked to the issue of
money-tainted politics that Kan has promised to eradicate.
The government and ruling party are keen to put an end to the Ozawa issue so
they can focus on securing the cooperation of opposition parties in passing the
fiscal 2011 budget. The opposition bloc has used the Ozawa scandal to attack
the Kan administration.
Ozawa was indicted on charges of conspiring with three of his former aides not
to record 400 million yen lent to his Rikuzankai political fund management body
in its report for 2004 and listing roughly 340 million yen used to purchase
land in a 2005 funds report, when it should have been included in the report
for 2004.
==Kyodo
2011-02-14 23:54:41