Local governments engaged in IR bids can be defeated in local elections
On the issue of IR development in Japan, the Shinzo Abe government has, from start to finish, acted like a political bulldozer, assuming that the opposition parties and the majority opinion of the Japanese people could simply be swept aside by overwhelming force, reports AGB Nippon.
Abe’s approach indeed has taken the casino IR project a long way forward, but the costs are now mounting, and the limits may be in sight. Hardly for the first time, Abe is essentially defying anyone to stop the IR casino project in the knowledge that the opposition parties are too divided, weak, and generally pathetic to hold them to account.
As there’s no plausible alternative government waiting in the wings, the Abe government appears to be insulated from the Japanese public, this is not equally true for the local governments that are now engaged in IR bids, as many of them can indeed be defeated in elections, and they are thus directly exposed to local public opinion.
So, while at the national level the opposition parties are planning to submit legislation that would abolish the 2016 IR Promotion Act and completely reverse the national policy, this effort is almost certain to fail. Most likely, the Abe government will contemptuously dismiss the bill and have little difficulty in doing so.
All this in the face of the 500 Dot Com bribery scandal, where the prosecutors have been leaking most of the details to the Japanese news media, and the emerging story is a damning one for the Abe government. If the prosecutors are to be believed, the basic story goes as follows.
On September 28, 2017, 500 Dot Com adviser Masahiko Konno brought 22.5 million yen (about US$207,000) in cash from Hong Kong to Japan, failing to make the required customs declaration.
In the following days and weeks, Konno and his colleague Katsunori Nakazato took bundles of this cash, in bags or envelopes, and delivered cash bribes to six Japanese lawmakers on behalf of 500 Dot Com, which at that time aimed to be licensed as an IR casino operator in Japan.
The largest sum—3 million yen—was allegedly handed over to state minister of the Cabinet Office Tsukasa Akimoto, who was then in charge of compiling the nation’s IR policy regulations. Akimoto has been arrested by prosecutors and is still being detained.
Apparently guilty of the same crime of bribe-taking, although at the lower sum of 1 million yen each, are five additional lawmakers who so far remain free. Among these five is the very prominent pro-casino lawmaker Takeshi Iwaya, who is a familiar figure at IR industry events, having been a keynote speaker on multiple occasions. One of the allegedly bribed politicians, Mikio Shimoji, who also happens to be the only one who wasn’t a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has admitted receiving the bribe.
The Abe government, through the person Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, took the opposite tack, suggesting that 500 Dot Com’s alleged bribery has absolutely nothing to do with IR policy and is nothing more than an irrelevant distraction, and Suga simply pledged to advance IR development as scheduled so that the Japanese people, eventually, would see the positive results.
The outcomes at the local level, however, may indeed be put in jeopardy by the 500 Dot Com bribery scandal. The conservative Hokkaido governor has already declined to make an IR bid, with the inability of ruling party assemblymen to back the initiative being a key factor. The Chiba mayor has also backed out of the IR race, though he tactfully denies that the major scandal influenced his decision.
The biggest remaining local battleground, obviously, is Yokohama—both because it would likely host the nation’s largest IR, and because the city administration is already battling hostile local opinion opposed to the IR construction initiative at Yamashita Pier. If the 500 Dot Com scandal were to topple the Yokohama IR plans, that would be a massive impact indeed.
Other major bidders, especially Osaka and Nagasaki, are probably less exposed to this scandal because their local publics are more tolerant of the IR initiatives, having been prepared for many years by their political leaders.
