Opposition parties start boycotting Diet debates

April 20, 2018

Tokyo- Six Japanese opposition parties began boycotting debates in both chambers of the Diet, the country's parliament, on Friday morning, in a show of protest against the responses of the government and the ruling camp to a series of scandals, including alleged sexual harassment of female journalists by the top bureaucrat at the Finance Ministry.

The opposition parties plan to refuse talks even on arranging Diet deliberations unless their demands, including Finance Minister Taro Aso's resignation over his appointment of Vice Finance Minister Junichi Fukuda at the center of the sexual harassment scandal, are accepted.

Fukuda on Wednesday offered to quit, citing difficulties continuing his duties due to the scandal. He has denied the sexual harassment allegation.

Following the opposition parties' refusal to participate in Diet proceedings, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party plans to cancel intensive discussions slated for Monday at the budget committees of both Diet chambers, to which Tadao Yanase, former executive secretary to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was planned to be summoned to testify over a favoritism scandal involving school operator Kake Educational Institution, headed by a friend of Abe.

Members of the six opposition parties held a joint meeting on Friday morning to slam the Abe administration over its handling of the scandals. "It's time (for Aso) to decide to step down," Tetsuro Fukuyama, secretary-general of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, said at the meeting.

Akira Koike, a senior official of the Japanese Communist Party, said, "Abe's cabinet has no choice but to resign."

Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the top government spokesman, told a press conference, "We want Aso to spearhead his ministry's efforts to restore the public's confidence."

Yoshihisa Inoue, secretary-general of Komeito, the coalition partner of the LDP, criticized the opposition parties, saying, "How dare they boycott Diet deliberations just because their requests were not accepted?"

Besides the sexual harassment scandal, the Finance Ministry has been under fire over its falsification of documents related to the sale of a state land lot at a huge discount to school operator Moritomo Gakuen, once linked to Akie Abe, the wife of the prime minister.

On Friday, two committees of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, held meetings without the presence of the CDPJ and other major opposition parties.

On Thursday, the six opposition parties demanded to the ruling camp Aso's resignation, sworn testimony at the Diet by people related to the scandals involving the two school operators and the release within April of the outcome of an investigation into the land sale document manipulation.

They also called for discovering the truth about the suspected cover-up of daily activity reports by Self-Defense Forces troops sent abroad in the past that were recently found despite the Defense Ministry's initial denial of their existence and probing details of a recent incident in which a male SDF officer accused a lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Party as "an enemy of the people."

The ruling camp only said that it will convey the requests to the government. Jiji Press