Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2009 October 14 - 20 [JCP]

JCP Central Committee holds its 9th Plenum

The Japanese Communist Party Central Committee held its 9th Plenum on October 13-14 at the JCP head office in Tokyo.

JCP Chair Shii Kazuo gave the report on behalf of the JCP Executive Committee. The report was based on his speech marking the 87th anniversary of the founding of the JCP.

In setting forth the tasks of the JCP as an opposition party engaging constructively with the new government, the report makes the following points:

(1) It is important to develop the struggle to break the crisis in various fields relating to people’s livelihoods;
(2) The ruling Democratic Party shows the tendency of fallaciously regarding its election platform (Manifesto) as the absolute norm for running the government and is calling for parliamentary reform;
(3) With new moves emerging in Japan as well as internationally regarding the struggle to achieve a “world without nuclear weapons,” the JCP has an important part to play;
(4) The struggle to defend peace is important as the government of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has not made clear its stance concerning issues relating to the Japan-U.S. military alliance, including the “reorganization of the U.S. forces in Japan” and the dispatch of Self-Defense Forces abroad.

Determined to achieve a JCP advance in the House of Councilors election due to be held in July next year, the report gave a summary of the recent general election and lessons derived from it. The party called for publicity to be increased to make JCP policies known to all eligible voters and have exchanges with them in order to increase support for the party. In this respect, the report said that the party has had a lot of positive experience, but it also noted that the party lagged behind other parties and was thus unable to reach its set goals. The report pointed out that the shortcomings are attributed to the fact that the party is not strong enough to wage a strong election campaign and that the day-to-day effort to strengthen the party with branches as the key players is essential. It also stressed that the biggest lesson to be drawn from the general election is that the JCP at the time of the election was not stronger than it was in the previous House of Representatives general election. The report referred to the practice and lessons of the new policy for the general election campaign established by the 5th Plenum of the Central Committee, and proposed new tasks for proportional representation blocs of the House of Representatives election.

The report stated that the “outcome of the upcoming political battle could bring about a major change in the power balance of political parties” under the new political situation. It states that the party will concentrate its energy on proportional representation seats and that the political goal of the party in this election will be to poll more than 6.5 million votes to ensure that all five JCP candidates will be returned without fail. In the report, Shii announced five comrades nominated as JCP candidates and their areas of candidacy.

As regards the prefectural constituency election, the JCP must secure a seat in the Tokyo constituency. To this end, the JCP CC nominated Koike Akira, JCP Policy Commission chair (and currently member of the House of Councilors selected from the national proportional representation bloc) as its candidate for the Tokyo constituency.

The report stated that the JCP will run candidates in all prefectural constituencies and called on candidates in constituencies where the JCP has had seats previously to seek to get a candidate elected.

The report emphasized that each party branch should set a target number of votes it wants to secure in the next election as an immediate goal and that the party tackles the tasks for the coming House of Councilors election in conjunction with the preparations for the simultaneous local elections slated for 2011.

In the end of the report, Shii proposed holding the JCP 25th Congress and tackling four major tasks in preparation for the Congress, including one to create a major upsurge in the drive to increase the party membership and Akahata readership by setting a “special campaign period”.

The Central Committee Plenum approved the proposal for holding the JCP 25th Congress for four days from January 13, 2010 with several agenda items, including the Congress resolution, the Central Committee report, and the selection of a new JCP Central Committee.

During the discussion on the Executive Committee report, 32 members spoke.

After the discussion, JCP Chair Shii made the concluding remarks. He also commented on the latest political developments regarding the political tasks of the JCP. He made additional comments on the recent general election, the party policy for achieving victory in the coming House of Councilors election, and the “special campaign period” aimed at achieving a major JCP advance, citing the decision of the Central Committee 2nd Plenum in July 2006, which called for the whole party to exert its potential fully. Pointing out the significance of this decision, he stressed four points to be kept in mind in carrying out activities during the “special campaign period.”

The Central Committee 9th Plenum unanimously adopted the Executive Committee report and the concluding remarks. It ended its work after confirming the determination to make the utmost effort to achieve a victory in the House of Councilors election as well as to hold the successful JCP 25th Congress and carry out the tasks of the special drive to increase party membership and Akahata readership. - Akahata, October 15, 2009