Japan's Ruling and Opposition Parties Agree to Discuss Abolishing Policy Activity Funds

Japan's ruling and opposition parties held their first meeting on political reforms on Tuesday, agreeing to work towards abolishing policy activity funds. These funds are currently not subject to disclosure, even when they reach hundreds of millions of yen.

However, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) remains hesitant to eliminate corporate donations, which have historically benefited the pro-business party. Lawmakers expressed concerns that such a move could be seen as a form of bribery and distort policy outcomes.

The discussions come as Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's LDP seeks to reach a consensus with the opposition camp on political reforms. This follows the party's loss of its majority in the House of Representatives election on October 27th.

The LDP aims to enact new revisions to the political funds control law by the end of the year. Currently, party powerbrokers are not required to report how they spend policy activity funds, raising concerns about potential misuse.

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan intends to develop its own proposals on political funds reforms. However, it remains unclear whether the main opposition party and the LDP will be able to reach an agreement on this issue.

The 24-day extraordinary parliamentary session is scheduled to begin on Thursday. The LDP faces intense scrutiny over revelations that some of its factions failed to report portions of income from fundraising events and created slush funds.

This follows previous revisions to the law passed in June, when the LDP, then led by former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, attempted to demonstrate efforts to reform the political funds system and regain public trust in politics.

However, these changes were criticized as insufficient, with opposition parties highlighting the absence of a ban on corporate donations and the lack of clarity on mandatory disclosures of policy activity funds.