The Liberal Democratic Party released the results of an internal survey Tuesday that showed 85 members failed to report political funds on their legally required income and expenditure reports over a five-year period to 2022.

But the survey’s methods were criticized by opposition parties as inadequate and lacking objectivity. Tuesday’s announcement is also unlikely to end the controversy, especially at a time when all parties are debating the next fiscal year budget, which must be passed before March 31. The government aims to have it clear the Lower House by the end of this month.

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), Nippon Ishin no Kai, the Japanese Communist Party and the Democratic Party for the People demanded Tuesday that the LDP convene parliament's political ethics committee, which includes all parties.

While the opposition is seeking to question members of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s faction and former LDP Secretary-General Toshiro Nikai’s faction over their involvement in the scandal, the party has remained evasive over the request. The Abe faction, the LDP’s largest, and the Nikai faction have announced they will be dissolved as legal groupings.

Last month, just before it was dissolved, the Abe faction revealed that donations to its members totaled ¥676.54 million over the 2018-2022 period. Of this amount, ¥427.42 million was made to political organizations of individual Diet members and others in 2020-2022, but omitted from political funds reports. The donations were kicked back to members of the Abe faction and not included in their income and expenditure reports.

The smaller Nikai faction failed to record over ¥100 million in kickback funds during the same 2018-2022 period.

CDP parliamentary affairs chief Jun Azumi said Tuesday that if the LDP refuses to hold ethics committee hearings, the next step would be to call on LDP members caught up in the scandal to testify before the Diet’s budget committee.

If the LDP also blocks that move, Azumi said, the CDP might not agree to cooperate with the LDP on setting dates necessary for voting on the fiscal year 2024 budget bill.

The survey was undertaken in the wake of the political slush funds scandal that has rocked the ruling party and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government. It covered a total of 384 party members, including 374 incumbents and 10 local district branch chiefs, of whom 85 received funding that was not recorded in their income and expenditure reports between 2018-2022.

Even before the results were officially handed over to the opposition parties Tuesday afternoon, however, the LDP's survey method came under criticism in parliament.

“The survey asked LDP members only two questions: whether or not they received payments (that were kept off the books), and if so, how much they received over five years. But the public wants to know what the money was used for and how it was used,” CDP lawmaker Issei Yamagishi said during a Lower House budget committee meeting Tuesday morning.

“If the money wasn’t used, then people want to know whether that’s tax evasion,” he added.

The Kishida administration has defended the way it conducted the survey.

”I think we have done everything we can, and we did so with the help of our lawyers,” Hiroshi Kajiyama, the LDP's executive deputy secretary-general, told reporters Tuesday.