Shii at JCP New Year meeting calls for efforts to make advance in upcoming general election

   In a speech delivered at the JCP New Year assembly held at the head office on January 4, Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo stressed that the Japanese political structure has arrived at a historical turning point in which the public is seeking a new political framework to replace the Liberal Democratic Party politics, and called on the whole party to be resolved to make efforts in order to achieve victory in the upcoming general election.

   Shii pointed out that degeneration of the LDP rule, which has lasted since the end of WWII, has reached an extreme, deepening contradictions with the public as well as the world.

   Shii took up the issue of “capitalism without rules.” He stated that the neoliberal economic policies promoted in the name of “structural reform” have resulted in a disastrous failure as shown by the fact that such policies now endanger not only the Japanese people but the very existence of human beings worldwide.

   Raising issues of increasing poverty and widening social gaps, rampage of speculative money, and destruction of the global environment, Shii stressed that these issues are urgently requiring Japan to drastically change its economic policies in line with the democratic remaking of Japan that the JCP Program is calling for.

   He also pointed to the dangers faced by the LDP’s subservience to the United States.

   In the past five years since the beginning of the Iraq War, while the failure of the U.S. military hegemonism has become clearer than ever, the peace forces have begun to surround the forces clinging to war as indicated by the marked increase in the number of parties to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC).

   Challenging the LDP, which is sticking to its policy of sending the Self-Defense Forces abroad under U.S. pressure and which is unable to formulate Japan’s own diplomatic strategy, the JCP, the only party that is openly advocating in its Program the abrogation of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, will strongly demand that Japan adopt an independent and peaceful diplomatic policy making use of Article 9, Shii stated.

   Concerning the Democratic Party’s political stance, he pointed out that “the true color of the ‘two major parties’ has been revealed” through the ongoing controversy over a “grand coalition” between the LDP and DPJ.

   Shii stressed that the DPJ’s “counterproposals” regarding issues of sending the SDF abroad and regressive taxation policies shed light on the fact that the DPJ is “a party of a nature that is the same as the LDP.”

   Only when the JCP, the party that is making efforts to achieve a true reform by drastically overturning the LDP politics, wins in the upcoming general election, will a new way to bring about a political framework serving the interest of the public open, he stated.

   Shinagawa Masaji, permanent director of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai), in an exchange with Shii published in Akahata on January 1 said, “I have to think about a ‘new type of socialism’.”

   Referring to Shinagawa’s remarks, Shii pointed out that actions and explorations aimed at socialism are being undertaken in many parts of the world. “Let us continue to talk about the hope for a future enshrined in the name of the Japanese Communist Party as well as the JCP’s policy of remaking Japan,” Shii stated.
- Akahata, January 5, 2008