August 15, 2024

Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, announced at a press conference held in the Prime Minister’s Office on August 14 that he will not run in the LDP presidential election in September when his term of office expires.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira later on the same day told reporters that Kishida’s decision not to run for the LDP presidential election is the result of “being cornered by public anger” over the LDP’s cozy ties with the former Unification Church as well as the off-the-book money scandal from fundraising revenues involving all LDP factions.

Koike said, “PM Kishida says he wants to show the general public by his stepping down that the LDP will change. But, I would say that nothing will change as long as a government rotates only within the LDP. The LDP-led government itself must end.”

He expressed his fortitude, saying, “I will do my utmost to achieve a major JCP advance in a general election following an early dissolution of the House of Representatives and to rebuild the joint struggle between concerned citizens and constitutional opposition parties.”

Asked by reporters how he would evaluate the Kishida government on security and nuclear abolition issues, Koike replied, “The former Abe Cabinet decided to allow Japan’s exercise of the right to collective self-defense, changing the conventional interpretation of the Constitution by 180 degrees, and the Kishida regime has made concrete steps toward the use of that right.”

He added that the Kishida government has made little diplomatic effort to create true peace in Northeast Asia while promoting Japan’s possession of the enemy-base strike capability and implementing a major military buildup that increased military spending by 2.5 trillion yen.

Koike said, “PM Kishida keeps refusing to join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and even refuses to participate as an observer in a meeting of the State Parties to the N-ban treaty despite repeatedly referring to himself as ‘a prime minister from Hiroshima’. He continues to disappoint A-bomb survivors’ expectations.”