Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged Saturday to make utmost efforts to regain public trust in his ruling Liberal Democratic Party that has been eroded by a slush funds scandal involving intraparty factions.
The LDP will boost efforts toward a revival, Kishida said at a meeting of executives of the party's regional chapters, apologizing for causing distrust in politics due to the scandal.
Kishida said he will launch a series of dialogue sessions with voters across the country to discuss political reform.
At the meeting held ahead of the LDP's party convention Sunday, Kishida said that the LDP has revised its governance code to prohibit the continuation and creation of traditional intraparty factions in the wake of the scandal.
In the scandal, many LDP members failed to report kickbacks they received from intraparty factions that were created by using revenues from fundraising parties.
Kishida said the next challenges that the LDP faces are imposing penalties against those involved in the scandal and revising the political funds control law to prevent any repeat of the scandal.
LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi said at the meeting that the party intends to hold sincere discussions with other parties to ensure that the law is revised during the ongoing parliamentary session.