Don’t forget secrecy law, reactor restarts, DPJ’s Kaieda urges voters Banri Kaieda, head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, is determined to prevent the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeito, from returning to the Lower House with a combined majority. “I want voters to judge from what (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe and his LDP have done for the two years since they returned to power,” Kaieda said in an interview on Tuesday. The government’s economic policies, dubbed “Abenomics,” will be a big campaign issue. But Kaieda said voters should also cast judgment on the state secrecy law and the Cabinet’s decision to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense. Furthermore, he said, the Abe administration has been promoting energy policies including a reliance on nuclear power “as if nothing happened on March 11, 2011.” That was the date of the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami which triggered the triple meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant, a nuclear disaster which is still resonating 3½ years later. On the economic front, the opposition leader said that unlike Abenomics his party focuses on middle-income people, reinforcing nursing and medical services and stepping up support for small- and medium-sized businesses in order to achieve growth in the medium to long term. On the issue of collective self-defense, Kaieda said the DPJ wants to keep national security exclusively defensive. “We will never allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense as envisaged by Abe, because cases cited by Abe where the Self-Defense Forces can fight for another country indicate the possibility of the scope of self-defense expanding limitlessly,” he said. Kaieda offered the view that there could be a realignment of opposition forces after the Dec. 14 poll, saying the Diet should be divided by two political forces: one led by the LDP and the other by the DPJ. But he also said his party will not pursue consolidating the opposition camp right after the poll. Kaieda said the DPJ has so far reduced the number of candidates it will field in the Lower House election to between 170 and 180, because the party wants to leave room for election cooperation with other parties. japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/11/26/national/politics-diplomacy/dont-forget-secrecy-law-reactor-restarts-dpjs-kaieda-urges-voters/#.VHZAj8m-mKE
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 00:08:41 +0000
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