JCP announces Tokyo assembly candidates

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

JCP announces Tokyo assembly candidates

The Japanese Communist Party Tokyo Metropolitan Committee on May 13 announced its 18 candidates running in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election scheduled for the summer 2009.

The 127-seat metropolitan assembly is elected from 42 constituencies. More JCP candidates will be announced some time later.

At a news conference, JCP Metropolitan Committee chair Wakabayashi Yoshiharu said, “The JCP will make efforts to help residents understand how important the JCP’s role is in blocking Governor Ishihara Shintaro’s undemocratic policies, protecting living conditions, and defending the Japanese Constitution. We will work in order to not only maintain the current 13 JCP seats but also win an extra number of seats.”

In the metropolitan assembly, all parties except the JCP have helped Governor Ishihara implement cutbacks in social programs for the elderly. Ishihara is also intent on carrying out a nine trillion yen urban development projects ostensibly as part of the effort to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

Ishihara’s metropolitan administration has forced metropolitan high school students and teachers to sing the national anthem and hoist the national flag at school ceremonies, including at graduation exercises, in defiance of a court ruling that deemed it illegal to force schools to do so.

At the JCP Tokyo’s activists’ meeting on May 12, JCP member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly Yoshida Nobuo said all JCP candidates will do all they can to win seats so that they can expose Ishihara’s outrageous policies in response to residents’ growing expectations of the JCP.

Azegami Miwako, the JCP candidate running for a seat in the Koto Ward, said that the metropolitan government plans to build 14 out of 21 Olympics facilities in Koto Ward. She stressed that the JCP should use its seats to reflect the residents’ demand that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government should use tax money to improve residents’ living conditions instead of squandering it on the Olympics. - Akahata, May 14, 2008