Japan Press Weekly

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2015 May 13 - 19 [POLITICS]

Self-proclaimed ‘political party of peace’ promotes war legislation

While proclaiming itself as a political party of peace, the Komei Party is actually playing a role as an enabler of the Abe government’s move to establish war legislation instead of acting as a brake, Akahta asserted on May 14.

The Komei Party on May 11 reached an agreement with its ruling coalition partner Liberal Democratic Party on bills related to the war legislation.

In July last year, the Abe Cabinet made a decision to legalize Japan’s exercise of the right to collective self-defense right, departing from successive governments’ interpretation that the use of such a right is unconstitutional. This move was led by LDP Vice President Komura Masahiko and Komei Vice President Kitagawa Kazuo.

The Cabinet decision states that Japan needs to play a more active role in providing logistic support to foreign troops facing combat situations. It also seeks to lift the ban on the Japanese Self-Defense Forces’ entry into combat zones and relax restrictions on the SDF’s use of arms in UN peacekeeping activities.

In drawing up the war legislation bills, the LDP has proposed measures which enable the SDF to conduct a wide range of militant activities. The Komei Party gave its approval to all the LDP proposals.

The agreed war legislation bills include a bill to create a permanent law for dispatching the SDF to overseas missions under the guise of contributing to the maintenance of world stability. Regarding this draft law, the Komei Party insists that it successfully had the bill incorporate a provision requiring prior Diet approval on SDF overseas dispatch without exception.

However, there is a glaring exception. Under the bill, the administration can expand the duration of an SDF overseas mission without prior approval two years after the start of the mission. In addition, the war legislation-related bills accept retrospective approval in many other situations.

In the first place, the proposed war legislation seeks to allow Japan to use the collective self-defense right even when Japan’s security is not threatened and make a permanent law to send the SDF anywhere in the world at any time, inevitably leading to the heightening of military tensions globally. The Komei is trying to mislead the public by claiming that it plays a role as one applying the brakes although it avoided discussing with the LDP whether such legislation is constitutional and necessary.