Civilian Control Left Behind

After reshuffling of the Cabinet, Shinzo Abe administration again faced consecutive questions on how the diary of Ground Self-defense Force in the peace-keeping operation in Juba, South Sudan, was treated in Ministry of Defense. The Ministry focused on defending itself by answering nothing to the opposite parties. It is still not clear whether civilian control of this government works or not.

Each Houses of the Diet held a committee meeting for discussing the diary scandal on Thursday. Abe administration showed negative attitude for solving the problem by sending no crucial person to the committee. Former Minister of Defense, Tomomi Inada, who had been responsible for checking the treatment of the diary, refused to attend the discussion. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not appear to the Committee, defying his announcement that he would be doing his best to find out the truth. Two former officers in charge of treating the diary, former Administrative Vice-Minister of Defense Tetsuro Kuroe and former Chief of Ground Staff Toshiya Okabe, also did not appear.

The leader for answering the question representing Abe administration was incumbent Minister of Defense, Itsunori Onodera, who succeeded Inada earlier this month. The biggest talking point was whether Inada had received the report from her staffs that the diary had not been scrapped. Onodera revealed that he found two kinds of opinion, one was not reporting about the existence of the diary and another was that someone might have reported.

There was a news report that Inada was wondering how to deal with the issue after she had known the existence of the diary, which had been said to be scrapped. The opposite parties questioned whether the Ministry kept the memo about Inada at that time. One officer of the Ministry refused answering to the question, saying “I would refrain from revealing what kind of document we keep.” It might be the top secret for the organization that Minister of Defense did not know how to deal with such an internal information as diary.

Onodera dismissed the request of further investigation inside the Ministry. In the context of Constitution of Japan, Japanese Self-defense Force cannot be send to the place where actual battle is ongoing. The diary recorded that actual battles happened in Juba where Ground Self-defense Force was in operation. That meant that the government of Japan had to decide the retreat from Juba. Abe administration did not do that. The officers of Ministry of Defense made false treatment of the diary, once by saying that it had been scrapped and then finding it in somewhere, supposedly for justifying the administrative decision. The problem is that all of those activities were made in the background.