Unilateral Victory in Donation

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released on Thursday the income and expenditure report on political funds in 2016. The registered organization of political donation for Liberal Democratic Party, National Political Association, received ¥2.32 billion last year, marking consecutive increase for five years after the beginning of the second Shinzo Abe Cabinet. It is supposed that LDP receives political donation as the return for economic policies that support big businesses.

According to the report, Liberal Democratic Party received ¥24.13 billion in total, which topped in the ranking of political parties for four consecutive years. Wholly dependent on donations from comrades, Japan Communist Party collected ¥21.68 for its political activities, that reduced from the previous year by 9%. Before suffering from separation this fall, Democratic Party received ¥10.68 billion last year, following ¥13.83 billion of Komeito, the coalition partner of Abe administration, supported by religious group of Soka Gakkai.

The biggest donor for National Political Association was Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. They donated ¥80.4 million to the association. Car manufacturing is the business most encouraged by economic policies of Abe administration, or Abenomics, that introduced monetary policy for low value of Japanese yen against United States dollar. That monetary policy fundamentally supported huge benefit of car exporters.

The next was Japan Iron and Steel Federation followed by Japan Electrical Manufacturers’ Association, both of which were related to carmakers by providing with raw materials of automobile. Toyota Motors solely took the fourth position with donation of ¥64.4 million. It is too explicit for LDP to argue that Abenomics and those donations had nothing to do with each other.

Having been upholding prohibition of political donation from business or organization, Democratic Party did not collect much donation from private businesses. DP mostly depended on individual donations, which would not be paralleled with LDP financial power. The ratio of public funding in whole income of all parties except JCP, which had not been accepting it, was over 60%, showing Japanese politics dependent on tax money. They used that money for their ordinary activities including salary of office workers, advertisement or election campaign for each candidate. But, the system of distribution along with the number of lawmakers is actually working as preferable to LDP.