The secretaries general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its two parliamentary allies agreed March 31 that the three parties will jointly draft a bill to ban lawmakers from obtaining money through influence-peddling.
LDP Secretary General Koichi Kato and his counterparts from the Social Democratic Party and New Party Sakigake -- Shigeru Ito and Hiroyuki Sonoda -- also agreed to submit the anticorruption bill to the current Diet session and to have it pass the legislature by its June close.
It is expected that the leaders of the three parties -- Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, SDP leader Takako Doi and Sakigake chief Akiko Domoto -- will confirm the agreement during a meeting scheduled for this afternoon. However, the LDP has asked its smaller allies to postpone their self-imposed deadline by one week to obtain a consensus on the proposed legal measure.
Originally, Hashimoto, Doi and Domoto agreed in January to conclude relevant talks among the three parties by the end of March. The proposed legislation, strongly backed by the SDP, would ban lawmakers from receiving money in exchange for pressuring government officials to give preferential treatment when signing contracts and issuing government licenses.
However, the LDP now wants to use the next week to hold a series of meetings and hearing from experts to determine what constitutes illegal influence-peddling, Kato told reporters. Political observers said the proposed law is aimed at banning a traditional method of collecting political funds for LDP politicians, many of whom have accepted money to pressure government officials to favor specific individuals, firms and organizations.