No future for forces destroying peace and living conditions

Following is a translation of the speech delivered by Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Shii Kazuo at the 74th May Day Central Rally in Tokyo:

I bring warm greetings of solidarity from the Central Committee of the Japanese Communist Party to all participants in the 74th May Day Central Rally.

Local election results

We have just fought nationwide local elections in cooperation with many people who share the desire to change their local government into one that puts residents' interests first. We were unable to secure the strength we previously held and therefore were unable to meet the voters' expectations. This is really an unfortunate outcome, and I promise you that we will review our struggle and draw the necessary lessons. But I also would like to tell you that we had gains which will be an important beachhead for our future struggle.

First, the JCP, with the 2,227 seats it won in the two rounds of the recent nationwide local elections, has defended its position as the number one party nationally with its 4,209 local assembly members.

Secondly, the JCP achieved its advance in regions where the JCP has been developing cooperation with non-affiliated people to establish new local governments. In Nagano and Tokushima prefectures, we increased our prefectural assembly seats. In four municipalities with JCP mayors - Komae City in Tokyo, Yuzawa City in Akita, Rikuzentakata City in Iwate, and Sakahoku Village in Nagano - all JCP candidates were elected to their local assemblies.

The changes taking place in these municipalities are not accidental. They provide hopeful signs that we can achieve similar changes throughout the country. It means that Liberal Democratic Party politics has no future. Let us be strengthened by these hopeful changes as we continue the struggle.

Reestablish rules for peace and urgently increase struggle against wartime legislation

The world has experienced the cataclysm of war in Iraq. Even though the U.S.-British forces are "victorious" in military terms, the slogan "Might makes right" does not apply.

This war was a war of aggression in violation of the U.N. Charter. It took the lives of large numbers of Iraqi citizens, including children, women, and elderly people. The international community must condemn these criminal acts.

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. and the Britain used as a pretext for starting this war, have not been discovered yet. We must keep demanding that the U.N. inspection team be sent back to Iraq to find the truth and solve the problem.

Furthermore, support for Iraq's reconstruction should be led by the United Nations. By conducting the lawless war, imposing military occupation, and trying to establish a new government in favor of the United States, new U.S. colonialism is causing severe contradictions in Iraq and other Middle East countries. Let's join forces to restore the peace established by the U.N. Charter.

The war on Iraq has clearly shown the danger of the unconstitutional wartime legislation, which, if enacted, will allow the Self-Defense Forces to participate in and mobilize Japanese citizens for U.S. wars. The government openly stated that the contingency laws could be invoked in the event of a U.S. preemptive attack on another country as it did on Iraq. The Diet discussion on the contingency bills will enter a critical phase early next week. I sincerely call on all of you to urgently increase the struggle to foil the wartime legislation.

Struggles to defend people's livelihoods

In the last two years of the Koizumi Cabinet the people's living conditions as well as the nation's economy have been in free fall.

It is particularly serious that workers' incomes keep falling. A survey in March showed that the incomes of households headed by salaried workers decreased by 7.5 percent from the previous year. This means a loss of a month's salary or more. This is a consequence of Prime Minister Koizumi's reform policy which supports corporate restructuring that involves cuts in the number of personnel as well as in wages, creating more unstable jobs such as part-time jobs.

And now the government is shifting an extra burden amounting to more than 4-trillion yen onto the people, whose incomes are already at an all-time low, through increasing medical expenses and taxes. Not only people's livelihoods but the nation's failing economy are drowning in a quagmire.

"Stop corporate restructuring and establish work rules," "No adverse revision of labor laws," "Get insured patients share of medical costs back to 20 percent (from the present 30 percent) and stop imposing a 4-trillion-yen additional burden on the people." These struggles to defend workers' living standards are important also for Japan's economic recovery. Convinced of this significance, let us develop these struggles on a national scale.

History involves zigzags, but the forces that destroy peace and living conditions have no future. United, we can definitely open the door to a hopeful future. (end)