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."