Japan Press Weekly

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2015 February 11 - 17 [JCP]

JCP starts national speaking tour preceding nationwide local elections

The Japanese Communist Party on February 10 started off its national speaking tour with a speech meeting at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium in preparation for the April nationwide local elections, having JCP Chair Shii Kazuo as the main speaker.

At the start of the meeting, the 214 JCP candidates running in the April contest were introduced. Lower House members Akamine Seiken, Miyamoto Toru, and Ikeuchi Saori reported on the anti-base struggle in Okinawa and on the current Diet situation. Chair Shii called for a JCP advance following the victory in the last general election.

First, touching on the Islamic extremist group IS, Shii said, “The international community must not fall into the trap of ‘violence leading to more violence’ or ‘hatred leading to more hatred’,” adding, “The most important thing is to strictly abide by international law and international humanitarian law with UN-centered global efforts. Only by doing so can the world decrease acts by terrorists.”

The upcoming local elections will take place in two months. Shii explained to the audience the JCP proposals dealing with issues related to people’s livelihoods, peace, a Henoko base in Okinawa, and misrepresentations of history. He then called on the crowd “to give the Abe runaway government a crushing blow”.

The JCP chair cited three examples of what a JCP victory in local elections will bring about by using the JCP Tokyo assemblypersons’ group, which increased its members from eight to 17 in the 2013 Metropolitan Assembly election, as an example.

To build more authorized childcare centers, the 17-member JCP group presented concrete and well-thought-out ideas in cooperation with residents to make use of vacated state- or metropolitan-owned sites. As a result, the number of facilities increased by 279 compared to four years ago, more than triple the number of facilities in 2011.

For more special nursing-care homes for the aged, the Tokyo JCP group proactively participated in citizens’ movements in each locality to collect signatures calling on each ward office to build more homes. The movements combined achieved the opening of 61 new facilities over the past four years. The pace of new construction is twice that of the previous four years.

In response to the JCP group’s persistent demand for employment security, Tokyo Governor Masuzoe Yoichi expressed that Tokyo will aim to create a society in which people can choose the work they most aspire to engage in. Tokyo’s long-term vision on job security now sets a target of 15,000 non-regular workers to achieve regular worker status in three years.