 20,000 people attend JCP Kyoto Festival About 20,000 people on November 7 attended the "2004 Kyoto Festival of Constitution-loving Citizens" sponsored by the Japanese Communist Party Kyoto Prefectural Committee. Participants listened to the lecture of JCP Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi and enjoyed music and other cultural events. They also confirmed their determination to go on the offensive and create new politics while overcoming the serious damage caused by a typhoon that hit western Japan last month. Ichida began his speech by expressing the JCP's resolve to do all it can to relieve the typhoon as well as earthquake victims in Niigata Prefecture. Referring to the U.S. military helicopter crash in Okinawa, the Self-Defense Force dispatch to Iraq, and the undemocratic attempts to adversely revise the Constitution and increase the consumption tax, he stressed that no "two-party system" can safeguard the peace or people's living standards. He stated that if the JCP, with its Program showing the peaceful path for Japan and the world to take in the future, grows stronger, the people will be able to frustrate the two-party agenda and create a Japan that is truly independent and peaceful, free of U.S. military bases and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in the interest of the people. (end) |