Roundup: Japan's opposition parties boycott Diet sessions amid mounting gov't scandals

TOKYO, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Japan's opposition parties boycotted Diet committee sessions on Friday after the government refused their demands over a number of scandal-related issues including influence-peddling improprieties implicating Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

To take account for a number of scandals involving the finance ministry here, the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) and five other parties are calling for the resignation of Finance Minister Taro Aso.

The scandals include allegations of sexual harassment leveled at a former top ministry bureaucrat who resigned over the ordeal, as well as the ministry's involvement in tampering with documents related to the government's murky sale of cut-price state land to a nationalist school operator.

The school's operator had close ties to Abe's wife, Akie, who was going to be an honorary principal at an elementary school to be opened on the heavily-discounted ground.

"This is not a situation in which we can enter Diet debate," Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary general of the CDPJ, was quoted as saying.

"We want to tell the government and ruling coalition not to make a fool out of the Diet or the public," he added.

The opposition parties are all in agreement following a meeting on Friday that they will seek Aso's resignation, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Japan's top government spokesperson, previously stated that Aso will stay on in his role at the powerful ministry and spearhead ongoing investigations into the scandals.

Suga on Friday reiterated the ruling camp's stance that Aso should stay, stating, "There is no change to our belief that we want him to work to regain trust in the finance ministry."

Suga's remarks on the situation were made while Aso is in Washington attending a Group of 20 meeting.

But the opposition parties want an unequivocal end brought to the scandals and are also calling for sworn testimony to be given by a former secretary of Abe's about a document implicating the prime minister in another cronyism scandal.

The document allegedly shows that Tadao Yanase, Abe's aide at the time, informed local officials that a project to open a veterinary school in Ehime Prefecture is a "matter concerning the prime minister."

Yanase has denied making the comments and has said he does not remember such a meeting with the local officials.

This, in contrast to the document's contents, which contain details of the exchange between the local officials at the prime minister's office three years ago.

The meeting at the time was held to discuss the opening of the school, the doors of which have recently been opened to students in western Japan by its operator Kake Educational Institution.

Abe has close ties with the school's operator Kotaro Kake and suspicions have long been circling that Abe used his influence in the government's approval of the newly-opened department at the Okayama University of Science.

The veterinary medicine department is Japan's first to be opened in half a century and is located in a specially deregulated zone in Ehime Prefecture.

The ruling parties said they plan to go ahead with Diet deliberations as usual despite the opposition parties' boycott. Enditem