Japan Press Weekly

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2011 September 7 - 13 [POLITICS]

DPJ lacks awareness of seriousness of Fukushima nuclear accident: Ichida

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko on September 12 announced that he appointed former Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio to replace Industry Minister Hachiro Yoshio who resigned from his post due to his controversial remarks on the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Edano served as a spokesperson of the Cabinet led by former Prime Minister Kan Naoto at the outbreak of accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. He should be held responsible for increasing the serious damage from the accident because he did not release for more than 10 days the government data showing how radioactive substances from the Fukushima NPP would spread.

Asked by reporters about Edano’s appointment as the industry minister at a press conference on the same day, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi criticized, “The Democratic Party of Japan-led government has only a superficial understanding of how serious the Fukushima nuclear accident is.”

Ichida said, “It is necessary for the government to express its determination that as one of its major tasks, it addresses the task of protecting people’s health from radioactive contamination and restoring (the Fukushima nuclear accident) victims’ lives. However, the DPJ government is basically ignoring this task.”

Ichida pointed out that under the situation in which the government is failing to determine the cause of the accident, bring the accident under control, and establish a new regulatory organ, the advisability of restarting suspended nuclear reactors is called into question.

He said that through Diet deliberations, the JCP will press Prime Minister Noda to withdraw from nuclear power generation and shift to the utilization of renewable energy sources based on the horrendous lessons learned from the Fukushima accident.