New Japanese Farm Minister Resigns Over Farm Subsidy Scandal in Latest Blow to Government

Thursday, September 6, 2007 5:36 PM CDT

Japan’s agriculture minister resigned Monday only a week after his appointment because of a scandal involving misuse of farm subsidies, the fourth Cabinet minister to step down in the past year.

Agriculture Minister Takehiko Endo, who took office in a Cabinet reshuffle aimed at strengthening a scandal-scarred government, submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe early last week and it was accepted.

The scandal was a fresh blow to Abe’s shaky government as the prime minister struggles to regain public support. Abe reshuffled his Cabinet last week following a defeat for the ruling coalition in July 29 elections for the upper house of parliament.

“The series of media reports has made the people lose their trust in politics,” Endo told reporters in announcing his resignation, acknowledging “inappropriate” conduct. “Again, I apologize for not having been able to achieve anything.”

Endo, Abe’s third agriculture minister in the past four months, acknowledged Saturday that a farm cooperative he headed had received $9,930 in government subsidies by exaggerating weather damage to the 1999 grape harvest.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Kaoru Yosano defended Abe’s appointment of Endo.

“The screening system this time was the most extensive in postwar Japanese history. We checked all the documents that we could obtain,” Yosano told reporters. “But we can’t know everything.”

Yosano said Masatoshi Wakabayashi, a former environment minister, would replace Endo.

Another high-ranking bureaucrat, Vice Foreign Minister Yukiko Sakamoto, also stepped down Monday after acknowledging that her support group faked funding reports in 2004-2005.

Abe - at 52, Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister - has been dogged by money scandals since taking office nearly a year ago.

His first agriculture minister, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, killed himself in May amid allegations he misused public money. His successor, Norihiko Akagi, resigned in August in a separate scandal. Two other ministers also have had to quit Abe’s Cabinet.

The resurgent opposition declared the Abe government untrustworthy, and called for snap elections for the powerful lower house of parliament, which chooses the prime minister. A defeat in that chamber would topple Abe.

“It is too late to regain trust of the Japanese people,” Yukio Hatoyama, a leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, was quoted as saying by public broadcaster NHK. “The lower house should be dissolved.”

While Abe had initially stood by his ministers in previous scandals, he apparently has decided it wiser to force disgraced Cabinet members to quit. After forming his new Cabinet last Monday, he announced that anyone caught in accounting scandals would have to step down.

Endo initially apologized and quit as cooperative head, but said he would not resign from the Cabinet. But he reportedly changed his mind after a series of meetings Sunday among LDP heavyweights and Chief Cabinet Secretary Kaoru Yosano, who Kyodo News agency said pressed Endo to quit.

Last Monday, he offered contradicting statements about why he hadn’t warned Abe about the potential scandal before taking office, saying first that he wasn’t aware of the problem, and then later saying that he didn’t have time.

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