Japan Press Weekly

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2010 January 13 - 19 [POLITICS]

Shii calls for struggles to meet citizens’ demand for political change

At a meeting of JCP Dietmembers, Shii stated that in order to fully realize the public demands, the party will carry out discussions in the Diet to emphasize the need to change the government’s pro-U.S. and pro-major corporations policies.

He pointed out the following four crucial tasks to be undertaken in the Diet session.

The first is the task to defend the general public from the serious economic crisis. Pointing out that the government had to admit in its new growth strategy the fact that wealth is concentrated in only selected large corporations, Shii stressed the need to return to the society the “largest buried money,” major corporations’ internal reserves, through a drastic revision of the Worker Dispatch Law and other measures to establish an economy governed by rules representing the public interest.

To recover the damage caused by former government’s measure to cut the annual growth of expenditure on social services by 220 billion yen will also help restore the economy, he added.

Regarding the issue of government financial resources, Shii called on JCP Diet representatives to promote struggles to cut into “two sanctuaries,” the military budget as well as the generous tax breaks for large corporations and the wealthy, and to oppose an increase in the consumption tax rate.

The second task is to show a course of solving the pressing U.S. base issues in Okinawa. Shii called for discussions to urge the government to realize an unconditional return of the U.S. Futenma base by revealing the facts that the U.S. Marine Corps stationed in Okinawa are a force readied for wars of aggression and that U.S. bases have been removed in other countries which had military alliances or treaty arrangements with the U.S. At the same time, the argument to create a national consensus to abrogate the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty is needed, he added.

The third is the “politics and money” scandals. Shii called for Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ozawa Ichiro to provide an explanation about the allegation and for the DPJ to come clean about scandals involving its members. “The Diet also needs to fulfill its responsibility to find the truth,” said Shii, calling for Ozawa’s testimony as a witness in the Diet.

The fourth is to block the move to create an authoritarian state under the name of “Diet reform.” Shii expressed his determination to help carry out struggles inside and outside of the Diet against a reduction in the number of proportional representation seats in the House of Representatives called for by the DPJ in its election manifesto (policy platform).
- Akahata, January 19, 2010