Japan Upper House Rejects Censure Motion against Labor Minister

June 27, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's House of Councillors voted down a censure motion against Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Katsunobu Kato at a plenary meeting on Wednesday.

A majority of the members of the Upper House, including those from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeito, voted against the censure motion, which was submitted by the Democratic Party for the People and other major opposition parties with the aim of blocking a vote on work-style reform legislation.

The ruling camp now aims to put the legislation, which the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe regards as the most important bill in the current parliamentary session, to a vote at Thursday's meeting of the Upper House Health, Welfare and Labor Committee and have it enacted on Friday.

The ruling parties also hope to have the Upper House Cabinet Committee pass a bill needed to implement a revised Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact on Thursday, for enactment at a plenary meeting on Friday.

The opposition camp hopes to prevent this, possibly by submitting a censure motion against economic revitalization minister Toshimitsu Motegi.

Holding talks on Wednesday morning, secretaries-general and parliamentary affairs chiefs from the LDP and Komeito reaffirmed their policy to speed up the handling of remaining key bills, including one to introduce integrated resorts that feature casinos.

They also agreed to respond cautiously to a request from opposition parties for cooperation in filing of a criminal complaint against a former senior Finance Ministry official for alleged perjury in parliamentary testimony, seeing that the issue involves human rights.

As a sworn witness, Sagawa spoke in parliament in March about a favoritism scandal involving school operator Moritomo Gakuen, once linked to Abe's wife, Akie.

Meanwhile, parliamentary affairs chiefs from the major opposition parties agreed to call on the ruling camp to quickly begin deliberations at the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, as part of their efforts to file the complaint against Sagawa. Jiji Press