The end of Lockheed affair

The end of Lockheed affair

It took 19 years but the Lockheed Scandal in Japan has finally run its course. The Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports from Tokyo on the final verdict.

TOKYO (JP): It is very hard to believe that at long last it is all over.

After nineteen years wending its circuitous way through the slow-moving Japanese custom of justice, rokkiido mondai (the Lockheed Problem) has been legally resolved.

After countless headlines, as many intrigues, much empty moralizing and some incredible twists and turns, the late, great former Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka finally goes into the history books as a convicted felon, who only escaped doing four years in prison because he died first, in 1993.

Last Wednesday the Japanese Supreme Court, after eight years on the case pondering its decision, finally got around to upholding the verdicts of lower courts: yes, Tanaka-san was guilty of taking a 500 million yen bribe from Lockheed Corporation to "encourage" All-Nippon Airways (ANA) to buy TrisStar jets for their growing fleet.

The two surviving appellate who lives long enough to bring this final appeal are unlikely to be imprisoned now that their guilt is confirmed. One is 85 years old and unlikely to be required to do time, while the other was only sentenced to a suspended sentence in the first place. (Technically, Tanaka was no longer a defendant as the Supreme Court dropped his case when he died.)

There were two interesting -- and ironic -- nuances to the Supreme Court decision:

No, the acquisition of evidence by the prosecution through depositions taken by foreign court (in the United States) was not permissible by the Japanese rules of the game.

Yes, Tanaka was well within his Prime Ministerial powers in giving "guidance" to the Transport Ministry, which, in turn, passed it on to ANA, that Lockheed TrisStars should be purchased.

The first decision meant that Tanaka's defense counsel won their point even as they lost the case. It was ironic because the Supreme Court itself had seemingly legitimized the procedure, whereby Lockheed executives gave deposition in a U.S. court in return for pledges of immunity. In 1976, the Supreme Court endorsed the promise of immunity. It has not explained why it did not advise on the illegality of the procedure at that time.

Tanaka's defense had claimed that the depositions were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court rejected this but did confirm that there was no provision in Japan's Criminal Procedure Law validating such a procedure -- something, one would have thought, that it might have pointed out nineteen years ago.

The defense objected to the procedure because, when the evidence was taken from the Lockheed executives in the American court, the defense counsel had absolutely no opportunity to cross-examine -- a concern which the Supreme Court has now said was legitimate.

But while this ruling might have made waves in 1976, when this foreign-sourced evidence was thought to be crucial to any conviction, the Supreme Court said that evidence from other sources amply proved Tanaka's guilt.

The second decision, concerning Prime Ministerial power, was a split one with eight justices endorsing a wider interpretation of prime minister's power than that endorsed by lower courts, and four justices having some caveats on the vexed subject of "administrative guidance", the means whereby bureaucrats advise businesses what they have to do. But even the minority went further than the lower courts had done in defining prime ministerial powers.

All this is exceedingly ironic given the political fact that Kakuei Tanaka was the first -- and perhaps the only -- Japanese Prime Minister to behave as prime minister behave everywhere else except Japan.

As Minister of Trade, as Minister of Finance and as Prime Minister Tanaka was not afraid to give bureaucrats directions on the assumption that ministers head their department and prime ministers are the head of government. Usually in Japan it is the bureaucrats who direct the politicians.

Some Japanese will always believe that what brought Tanaka down was the very fact that he did go against the norm -- and the bureaucrats, knowing lots of things because of the over- regulation of the Japanese financial system, helped bring him with some discreet leaks.

The trouble with Kakuei Tanaka was not that he used the Prime Ministership to give thrust and direction to the often moribund face of Japanese politics -- but that he expected to get paid for it way beyond his salary. The Lockheed bribe (US$5 million at today's exchange rates but less than $2 million when the bribe was given) was indeed, as Tanaka reportedly described it, "mere peanuts". But it came in more easily traceable foreign exchange, and that was Tanaka's undoing. Unquestionably he made far greater sums closer to home. He set a tradition of money-politics which has yet to be purged from the political scene here.

In that sense, rokkiido mondai is still with us. One is left nostalgically wondering how much different things would have been had Tanaka linked his personal dynamism to a distaste for personal enrichment, basing his political appeal on personality and policy rather than cash handouts. Had this happened, it might have produced a very different, much more internationally acceptable, Japan.

Some of this appeal filters through from ordinary Japanese as the Supreme Court ends the legal affairs.

"What a pity Kakuei-san is not around to hear all this -- it would have been so dramatic to see him go off to prison," one Japanese journalist comments and I suspect she is emphatically not alone.

Many Japanese never expected Tanaka to be convicted. Belief in their system of government would be that much stronger today among Japanese had the final verdict been reached much earlier.

Jokes are seldom told about Japanese politicians but one on Tanaka bears retelling. "Wherever he is now," the saying goes, "you can be sure he is hard at work trying to establish the largest single faction there -- before (former Prime Minister Noboru) Takeshita and (opposition leader once Tanaka protege) Ichiro Ozawa come and join him".

Tanaka was the only true commoner to become Prime Minister since 1945. He merely graduated in the high school of experience. Ordinary people could relate to him as they have related to few others.

As it happened, Tanaka's daughter, Makiko, who is Minister for Science and Technology in the present cabinet, underlined feelings of nostalgia as she spoke after the verdict, in typically feisty fashion, on her father's behalf.

"I wish the decision could have come out while he was alive," Makiko said "I wish there had been a speedy trial. That was what my father expected... As far as I see this trial, I cannot help having the impression that an impartial and fair trial cannot be expected in the Japanese judicial system".

For this last comment she has been gently chided by cabinet colleagues, who will no doubt accept her display of Confucian filial piety, and less gently by the opposition. Despite the fact that Tanaka sent her to the best U.S. schools, Makiko, is a chip off the old block.

It is widely considered impossible for any Japanese women to aspire to become Prime Minister. If anyone can do it, Makiko is the one. Hopefully behind the hot words after the final verdict lies a clear recognition of where Dad went wrong.

But her point on where the Japanese judicial system goes wrong is well taken. The 19 years taken before the case concluded is abject by any standards. "It was so long that I feel as if I have already been punished" said one of the defendants whose final appeal has now been answered.

"The protracted judicial process undermines the constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair and speedy trial," the Yomiuri Shimbun editorialized, "Exceedingly long trials in effect constitute abandonment of a basic mission of the judicial system."