LDP to Revise Rules to Ban Traditional Factions

Tokyo, March 7 (Jiji Press)--Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has drafted revisions to its rules, disciplinary regulations and governance code, including a ban on traditional intraparty factions, it was learned Thursday.

The draft was discussed at a meeting on the day of the LDP's political reform headquarters, chaired by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, also president of the party.
 

The draft revisions also include tougher penalties for political funds control law violations, such as recommending member lawmakers leave the party if accounting officials of their political groups are arrested or indicted for such violations.
 

The LDP plans to revise the governance code at a general council meeting on Tuesday and the rules and disciplinary regulations at a party convention on March 17, hoping to regain public trust in the wake of a high-profile money scandal involving its intraparty factions.
 

At Thursday's headquarters meeting, Kishida said, "We must push ahead with drastic reform of the LDP without being bound by precedents and practices." Some participants, however, claimed that the proposed revisions are not enough.
 

In the draft, factions are defined as organizations that use their funding ability and influence over personnel matters to increase their membership and use a larger membership to exert greater influence. The draft calls for a ban on the continuation and creation of such organizations.
 

Policy groups that do not meet the definition will be allowed to exist, but will be urged to suspend activities for a certain period or dissolve if they are found to have violated the law.
 

The draft also calls for allowing the party to suspend lawmakers from their party posts, advise them to step down from their parliamentary or government posts, remove its endorsement of them as election candidates, suspend their party membership and tell them to leave the party, if their accounting heads are arrested or indicted.
 

If the accounting chiefs are found not guilty or found to have committed funds law violations to ensnare the lawmakers they worked for, such punishments on the lawmakers would be retracted.
 

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