LDP under fire for excluding regime leaders from Unification Church probe

Tokyo, Sept. 19 (Jiji Press)–Japanese opposition parties and others are criticizing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party for excluding parliamentary leaders from its recent probe into links between its member lawmakers and the controversial religious group formerly called the Unification Church.

The exclusion of Hiroyuki Hosoda, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the Diet, the Japanese parliament, and Hidehisa Otsuji, Speaker of the House of Councilors, the upper house, is explained by the fact that the two are not lawmakers belonging to the LDP, according to the party.

But Hosoda and Otsuji are both LDP members. It was discovered that Hosoda had attended a meeting linked to the Unification Church, now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The leaders of both houses usually leave their parliamentary caucuses when they take office because they are required to be neutral.

But LDP-linked sources said Hosoda and Otsuji were party members. Hosoda, who was elected from a constituency in the western prefecture of Shimane, is on the list of LDP lawmakers posted on the party’s prefectural branch website in Shimane.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]