Japan Press Weekly

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2011 June 8 - 14 [POLITICS]

Constitutional revisionist Dietmen launched group

About 100 pro-constitutional revision Dietmembers on June 7 inaugurated a parliamentarian group aiming to ease the requirements for making amendments to Japan’s supreme law.

Along with lawmakers of the Democratic and the Liberal Democratic parties, those of the Your and the Sunshine parties and House of Councilors President Nishioka Takeo took part in the inaugural meeting. Former prime ministers, Mori Yoshiro, Aso Taro, and Abe Shinzo, were appointed as advisers to the group.

Each party’s representative gave a speech.

Representing the DPJ, former Environment Minister Ozawa Sakihito said, “It is necessary to create an environment that makes it easy to revise the Constitution through modification of Article 96 which stipulates that constitutional reform requires a two-thirds or more approval in both houses.”

From the LDP, former Senior Vice Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Furuya Keiji cited the fact that at present more than 200 lawmakers have agreed to submit a draft bill to change Article 96 to the Diet while the constitutional revision procedure law requires 101 or more advocates from the House of Representatives and 51 or more from the House of Councilors in order to submit the bill.

“Since the Constitution was created, this is the first move intending to propose revising a specific article of the Constitution,” said Furuya.

Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo said that amending Article 96 “will make a hole in a thick wall.”

The parliamentarian group wants to relax the requirement written in Article 96 from the current two-thirds or more to just a plain majority.