In an effort to win back public trust in politics by regulating political funding, the three ruling parties agreed March 17 to ban donations to parties from organizations that receive subsidies from local governments and the central government.
Currently, organizations that receive state subsidies are not allowed by law to make political donations for the first year.
Three Diet members from the Liberal Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party and New Party Sakigake, who chair a team working on political reform, also agreed to make political donations more transparent by asking that they be received through bank accounts set up to receive such funds if the amount exceeds 10,000 yen.
The question of regulating the number of such bank accounts will be discussed later, according to the SDP's Masako Owaki. The three also agreed to ban politicians from changing parties after they have been elected through proportional representation.
A politician will be allowed to change parties only if the party he or she wants to transfer to did not exist at the time the politician was originally elected, they said. The panel is to finalize the agreement March 18.