FOCUS: Japan Diet Session Seen Centering on Constitution, New Ministers

October 23, 2018

Tokyo- With the Diet, Japan's parliament, set to kick off an extraordinary session on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe aims for progress in debates on constitutional amendments based on a draft proposal compiled by his ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Opposition parties are expected to grill the Abe government over whether first-time ministers who joined his cabinet in a major reshuffle early this month are qualified for their positions, analysts said. Among their targets is regional revitalization minister Satsuki Katayama.

This will be the first Diet session since the new Abe cabinet was launched on Oct. 2.

During the 48-day session through Dec. 10, the ruling and opposition parties are expected to hold heated debates in the run-up to the election next year for the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet.

Abe will deliver his policy speech on the opening day of the session. Question-and-answer sessions on the speech are expected to be held for three days from Oct. 29, after the prime minister returns from a three-day visit to China on Saturday.

The government and the ruling camp of the LDP and its partner, Komeito, hope to see the passage by early November of a fiscal 2018 supplementary budget to finance reconstruction projects for areas devastated by a recent series of natural disasters.

During the extra Diet session, they also aim for the enactment of a bill to revise the immigration control law in order to create a new residence status designed to accept more foreign workers in the country.

For constitutional revisions, Abe has suggested a plan for the LDP draft to be presented to the constitutional panels of both the Upper House and the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, during the coming session.

The draft includes the addition to war-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution a new provision to clarify the rationale for the existence of the country's Self-Defense Forces. Revising the top law is a long-cherished political ambition of Abe.

Meanwhile, opposition parties are calling for prioritizing a revision to the national referendum law in a bid to expand voting opportunities in a national referendum on constitutional amendments by, for example, allowing polling stations to be set up at commercial facilities.

The opposition side is also calling on the ruling camp to focus on discussions on tightening regulations on television and radio commercials for national referendums.

Against this background, as well as due to his tight diplomatic schedule, it remains uncertain whether Abe can see progress in discussions on constitutional amendments, sources familiar with the situation said.

The opposition camp is expected to attack new ministers, including Katayama, who was recently reported by a weekly magazine to have received one million yen in return for exercising her influence on the National Tax Agency. Katayama is the only female minister in the reshuffled Abe cabinet.

Among other first-time ministers, Mitsuhiro Miyakoshi, minister for issues in Okinawa Prefecture, southern Japan, and the Northern Territories, or four Russian-held northwestern Pacific islands claimed by Japan, was found to have received political donations from a company punished over its involvement in bid-rigging.

Other key issues in the extraordinary Diet session include the planned consumption tax rate hike to 10 pct from the current 8 pct in October 2019 and the ratification of an economic partnership agreement between Japan and the European Union. Jiji Press