Japan Press Weekly

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2016 October 19 - 25 [POLITICS]

Civil group lodges protest over DP candidate in Tokyo by-election

A citizens’ group on October 21 lodged a protest against a Democratic Party candidate backed by opposition parties in the Lower House by-election in Tokyo regarding his being absent from a street speech rally hosted by the civil group.

The group, Ten Network 2016, said that they repeatedly made a request to Suzuki Yosuke, the DP candidate in the Tokyo No.10 district in the by-election, to take part in the rally but he ignored their request.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira held a press conference regarding this matter on October 24 in the Diet building and said, “As heads of the four opposition parties were all expected to be on a campaign van in the rally, it was natural for the civic organization to expect the candidate to show up.” Koike criticized the DP for letting the candidate not participate in the rally by saying, “The candidate turned his back on the joint effort made between citizens and opposition parties.”

In the Tokyo No.10 by-election, the JCP accepted the DP request to field a joint candidate and took the trouble of withdrawing its own candidate from the candidacy after confirming with the DP the “revocation of the war laws” as an election pledge. However, “The DP candidate did not even touch upon this absolute must during his election campaign,” Koike said in anger.

Nevertheless, DP Secretary General Noda Yoshihiko on October 24 called on opposition parties for “as much cooperation as possible” in the next general election and went on to say, “The DP is ready to further negotiate” with them to this end. At the same time, Noda commented about the speech rally in question and said, “We decided to send the DP leader there but we left the decision to participate to Suzuki’s campaign office.”

Regarding this DP handling of the joint candidate, Koike emphasized the need to hold an urgent meeting among the four opposition parties “to sincerely evaluate and honestly discuss this DP response” in light of a series of agreements made upon among the JCP, the DP, the Liberal Party (formerly known as the People’s Life Party), and the Social Democratic Party.

Past related article:
> 4 opposition parties field joint candidates in Lower House by-elections [October 6, 2016]
> Opposition party leaders agree to cooperate ‘as much as possible’ in general election [September 24, 2016]