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Shii delivers Central Committee Report

On January 11, Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Shii Kazuo gave the Central Committee Report to the JCP 24th Congress, focusing on issues that needed to be elaborated on and reinforced in order to improve the draft Congress resolution based on the pre-Congress inner party discussion. The main points of the report are as follows:

The draft resolution, in Part One that analyzed the three aberrations of LDP government policies, emphasized the danger of Prime Minister Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine. The draft's warning that if the prime minister's visits are established as Japan's national policy, ﾒit will cause immeasurable damage to national interests," is coming true.

Justifying the Japanese war of aggression, the core of the Yasukuni Shrine question, is tantamount to defying the foundation of the international order established after World War II. The fact that this question poses a contradiction even between Japan and the United States, proves the deep-rooted anomaly of LDP politics which inherits the mindset of the war criminal.

Concerning Japan's subservience to the United States, the struggles against the transformation and realignment of the U.S. armed forces and the adverse revision of the Japanese Constitution are two focal points at issue. The struggle against the Constitutional mal-revision is of historical significance as it has to do not only with Japan's course in the 21st century but also the peace order in Asia and the world, demanding all-out efforts by the JCP.

On the question of aberrant politics centered on big business, poverty and the social inequality are rapidly growing in Japan. The draft Resolution characterized the Koizumi government's economic policy line as one of "neo-liberalism" because the term has its origin in the United States under the Reagan administration and it has been imposed on Japan. Shii called for organizing a "social counter-offensive in solidarity with a broad-based grouping of society" aimed at building a Japan in which everybody can live a humane life, in opposition to the Koizumi policy of divide-and-rule.

With regard to Part Two of the draft Resolution concerning the view of the United States based on the new JCP Program, though the United States has never given up its policy of military engagement in East Asian countries, it has become difficult for it to rely only on military means and is forced to employ multiple diplomatic approaches. This is due to the changes taking place in the world structure in which progressive currents calling for a "peaceful order" or a democratic "economic order" have become influential, as seen in East Asia and South America.

As regards the JCP election campaign policy that the draft put forward in Part Three, the draft Resolution as a whole provides a policy for the coming national elections based on the lessons we learned from the three recent national elections.

He spoke of the perspectives for a united front, responding in detail to a question raised in the whole party discussion regarding cooperation with other political parties.

In order to put the party building effort on a stable path, the draft resolution in Part Four and Five proposes improving party activities, looking squarely at the weaknesses of party guidance as well as party activities. If all JCP branches increase grassroots efforts to strengthen ties with the public in a conscious manner using their 'policy and plans,' they will certainly acquire the power to overcome any adversity and make an advance. Let us give rise to a major wave of a party advance comparable to the advance in the 1960s.
- Akahata, January 12, 2006