Japan’s DP, Party of Hope Broadly Agree to Form Diet Group

January 14, 2018

Tokyo- Executives of the Democratic Party and the Party of Hope reached a broad agreement on Sunday to form a parliamentary group between the two Japanese opposition parties.

At a meeting in a Tokyo hotel, DP Secretary-General Teruhiko Mashiko and his counterpart at the Party of Hope, Motohisa Furukawa, broadly agreed that their parties will create a parliamentary group in both chambers of the Diet.

The two parties will start internal procedures to launch the alliance, ahead of the start of the ordinary Diet session set for Jan. 22. But the procedures may not progress smoothly because some members of both parties oppose such alliance.

The DP and the Party of Hope were adjusting their views on basic policy issues after the DP proposed forming a parliamentary group.

The key thorny issue was national security laws enforced in 2016. The DP regarded part of the laws as unconstitutional, while the Party of Hope fully tolerated the laws.

Speaking to reporters, Mashiko said both sides made concessions on the issue.

Furukawa said the envisioned parliamentary group marks the first step toward the creation of a big opposition force capable of matching the ruling bloc led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party.

The two opposition parties are expected to hold a meeting of their secretaries-general and Diet affairs heads on Monday to conclude a formal agreement.

The two parties' combined effective strength in the Diet is 65 lawmakers in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, and 45 lawmakers in the House of Councillors, the Upper House.

Meanwhile, the current biggest opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan has 54 Lower House lawmakers and six Upper House members.

In the DP, however, some members including lawmakers who ran as independents in last year's Lower House election, such as Katsuya Okada, oppose the idea of forming a parliamentary group with the Party of Hope.

In the Party of Hope, conservative founding members are negative about such alliance.

The DP initially aimed to create a parliamentary group with the Party of Hope and the CDPJ. But the CDPJ has refused to join, saying its philosophy and policies are different from those of the Party of Hope. Jiji Press