TOKYO — Two vice ministers for health, a big city mayor, and more than 30 opposition lawmakers on Thursday joined the growing ranks of Japanese politicians to admit they had skipped paying their pension premiums.
A top Cabinet minister and the head of the main opposition party already have resigned in the widening scandal, which has unfolded as Parliament debates a bill to hike premiums and cut retiree benefits in order to ensure the system's solvency.
The ruling coalition wants the upper house to pass the legislation next month. The more powerful lower house already approved the bill this week.
Eisuke Mori, whose health ministry oversees the national pension system, said he unwittingly missed payments for 13 months when he was a parliamentary secretary for labor. His fellow vice minister Takashi Tanihata said he skipped nearly six years of payments just after being elected to Parliament in 1989.
The mayor of Yokohama, Japan's second-largest city, said he failed to make payments when he was a national lawmaker.
Most of the confessing culprits said they mistakenly thought they had paid their premiums. Many said they misunderstood the steps they needed to switch between different branches of the public pension system when they assumed new jobs.
The main opposition bloc, the Democrats, announced Thursday that 33 of its 244 lawmakers in Parliament had missed some of their payments over the years. The party's president, Naoto Kan, resigned on Tuesday for having missed his payments for 11 months when he was health minister in the 1990s.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party said it would not disclose a list of its party's delinquents. Instead, the party said it would leave the decision of whether to reveal pension information up to each of its lawmaker. An independent tally by public broadcaster NHK showed at least 50 LDP lawmakers had missed some payments.
The spiraling scandal has shaken public trust in the national pension system.
Sixty-two percent of respondents to a NHK poll last weekend said they had less confidence in the system since hearing that seven Cabinet ministers and Kan had missed paying their premiums. Another 26 percent said they didn't have much faith in the system to begin with.