Why?
...it emerged that Maehara had been receiving 50,000 yen annually from a 72-year-old South Korean resident of Kyoto in violation of the Political Funds Control Law. The benefactor runs a small barbecue restaurant, and has known Maehara since he was in his second year of junior high school.
That totals 250,000 yen (approximately £1,870 or 11,300 NIS).
And as further explained:
"The donation amount is not the issue here," he said. "That a figure such as the foreign minister had not taken a law banning politicians from accepting donations from foreign nationals seriously is the issue."
So, money accepted from a foreign source is tainted in Japan.
And in Israel?
Well, even the Attorney-General is vacillous.
^
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2 comments:
ym,
the knesset hasnt banned donations from foreign entities...i believe bibi received donations from foreign donors
and they dont even want individual donors to be revealed
all they want to know is if foreign governments are funding ngos
now the left finds this horrific
i find that it doesnt go far enough
have all ngos release the names of their donors...why should anyone have anything to hide?
An ironic twist on this would be that the "South Korean resident" was almost certainly born in Japan, and may be a fifth or sixth generation resident. But Koreans born in Japan are considered foreign residents by the national government. I haven't been able to unearth any particulars in a web search, but if you've ever lived in Japan, you know about this practice. The media wouldn't even be likely to mention it, simply because it's so accepted. But the "South Korean" donor is from a family that has been running the same yukiniku restaurant near Kyoto for more than 30 years, based on the fact that she knew the 48-year-old Maehara as a customer when he was in junior high. The restaurant family has probably been in Kyoto considerably longer than that -- and still they're "South Korean residents" and their political donations are classified as "foreign."
If Israel did that, there would be a dozen human-rights documentaries on the subject, hundreds of complaints lodged with UN organizations, and protests on college campuses across the Western world every week.
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