Could a scandal crush the reformer?

Crushing blow

The top-selling Yomiuri newspaper reported that Tokyo

prosecutors had started hearings with people on a donors'

list for Mr Hatoyama, who took office last month after his

party's crushing election victory.

Prosecutors have launched a probe into the fund-raising

activities of new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's office.

Hatoyama's lawyer, Mr Yoichi Ioroi: "An investigation into

the case of a (possible) violation of the political funds

control law has begun".

In June, Mr Hatoyama admitted keeping sloppy accounts for his

fund-raising association, which reported the donors' list

including the names of dead people and those who had denied

giving money.

Mr Hatoyama said his former accountant was solely responsible

for the problem. Amount involved? 21 million yen recorded

incorrectly since 2005.

Mr Hatoyama's government downplayed news of the

investigation. "Our prime minister has repeatedly made

apologies and explanations about what he knows," says Chief

Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano. Better wait for results

of investigation by prosecutors the new prime minister said.

His predecessor in breaking LDP rules early 90s also fell for

incorrect political funding. Time, 1994 April 18 :

http://tinyurl.com/y9cbaod

"A popular reformer who came to power last August pledging to

sweep out "money politics" was outrun by a scandal of his own

making... "Hosokawa confessed that his previous explanations

of a questionable 1982 loan had not been candid... The

suspect loan, worth $960,000, came from the Sagawa Kyubin

trucking company. Hosokawa claims that he repaid the money,

but critics say he kept it to fund his campaign to become

governor of Kumamoto prefecture the following year. When

pressed, the Prime Minister first asserted that he used the

cash to purchase an apartment in Tokyo and to repair the

roofed gate and plaster wall of an ancestral home. Opposition

legislators charge that he bought the apartment before he

received the loan. They tracked down the construction

workers and determined that they charged only $67,000 for the

repair -- and did the work a year after Hosokawa received the

loan... Despite his downfall, Hosokawa will be remembered

for his role in prying Japanese politics free from the

hammerlock of the L.D.P. But he leaves behind an awkward

governing coalition, which includes highly conservative

former L.D.P. barons widely viewed as corrupt, as well as

pacifist social democrats and disparate smaller parties."

End of quotes.