Ruling Komei Party helping opposition DPJ in Upper House election

In the House of Councilors election, the Komei Party in local constituencies where it runs no candidate, is accelerating its moves to "pass its supporters' votes" to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

These backstage deals are aimed at preventing Japanese Communist Party candidates from being elected and met with a counteroffensive by JCP members and supporters.

In the two-seat Kyoto prefectural constituency, a Komei prefectural assembly member said that the party recommends an LDP candidate because it can't allow the JCP to win a seat. Also in Kyoto City, a member of Soka Gakkai, Komei's parent religious organization, called for supporting a DPJ candidate.

Refuting this practice, the JCP says that such a way of shifting supporters' votes of the Komei Party, a government party, to the opposition DPJ is unjustifiable. The only aim of such an underhanded campaign is to defeat the JCP, which maintains influential power in Kyoto.

In Hyogo Prefecture (two-seat constituency), a DPJ candidate advocated that he can partly appreciate Komei Party policy, and Hyogo's Komei Party called for support for the DPJ on its website.

On this deal, Yamamoto Yukio, former chair of the Hyogo Prefectural Assembly, warned that any political party should not trade their supporters' votes in the election. He expressed his expectations for the JCP because it is fighting the election battle fairly and squarely.

On a TV program aired on July 23, Shii Kazuo, JCP chair, criticized the Komei Party for its extraordinary moves in the election. Also, on a DPJ call for winning Komei's backup, Shii said, "The DPJ must answer what its Diet policy will be if such a candidate is returned. In a sense, it will mean that the DPJ will be taken in by the LDP-Komei alliance." (end)