New SDP chief Mataichi eager to promote opposition cooperation

February 26, 2018

Tokyo- Seiji Mataichi, approved as new leader of the small Japanese opposition Social Democratic Party on Sunday, expressed his readiness to promote the SDP's cooperation with other opposition parties toward the election for the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of Japan's parliament, in summer 2019.

"I'll focus on moving forward with cooperation among opposition parties and reducing pro-constitutional revision forces' presence in the Upper House below two-thirds," he said at a press conference held after the end of the SDP's two-day convention in Tokyo through the same day.

Mataichi, an Upper House member, said that he will call for a meeting among opposition party leaders for work to adjust candidates in constituencies where one seat each will be contested in the 2019 Upper House election.

The SDP endorsed Mataichi as its new leader at the party convention. SDP policy chief Hajime Yoshikawa was picked to double as the party's secretary-general, the post held by Mataichi before he took office as SDP chief.

On the SDP's relations with the major opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, Mataichi said, "I think both parties feel very close to each other." But he added that his party should not seek an early integration with the CDPJ, stressing that the SDP should first make efforts to boost its own presence.

There are calls within the SDP for its merger with the CDPJ, which was created mainly by liberal members of the Democratic Party, also an opposition party, shortly before the Oct. 22, 2017, general election for the House of Representatives, the all-important lower chamber.

At the two-day party convention, the SDP adopted a strategy for next year's Upper House election, which urges the party to obtain at least 2 pct of votes to be cast under the proportional representation format and win at least three seats in total.

Mataichi's term of office as SDP head runs until the party's next convention two years later.

Mataichi won an Upper House seat for the first time in the 2001 election and is now serving his third term.

He ran for the SDP leadership in January after Tadatomo Yoshida expressed his intention of not seeking reelection as party head following his loss of an Upper House seat in the 2016 election. Mataichi was elected SDP chief without a contest late last month. Jiji Press