The Diet is the highest organ of state power – but today’s one does not deserve the constitutional phrase. The ordinary session has ended. For a period of 182 days demonstrated were majority dominance, overconfidence and arrogance of the ruling parties instead of reign of laws and facts. The Diet constituted an election-led-dictatorship machine. We must remember this reality. Let’s keep fighting, without desertion, to regain leadership of state politics from the hands of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito.

RULING BLOC DO NOT RESPECT PEOPLE AND DIET

The ordinary session of the 196^th legislature began with compilation of a supplementary budget of Fiscal 2018, which includes 234.5 billion Yen of military expenditure. The sum is ready for procurement of weapons, which occupies 80% of the budget, including Aegis Ashore system of which the Abe government made a purchase contract in the US-Japan summit meeting held last autumn. Thus the total expenditure for military purposes accounts 5 trillion 425.6 billion Yen, which means to consolidate preparedness for war as well as intensify tension in the East Asian region.

The Abe administration, discounting the Constitution, has managed state power recklessly and damaged parliamentary debates. Scandals of the Moritomo and Kakei schools have eloquently disclosed the government’s intentional falsification and concealment of public documents, phony statements of former Director General of the National Tax Agency and plausible involvement of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo himself. Suspicions have deepened further.

Deregulation of Working Hours

The government regarded a ‘bill to reform work style’ as the most urgent and imperative, but the draft revealed fabrication of data and absence of due process of legislation. Even these facts were verified during the debates, the bill to deregulate working hours was enacted forcibly to destroy the current labor practices. In the same way as in the law on dispatching workers, the new law will pressure on all workers in the country. The intention of law lies in a rule that a small change can be grown bigger. This means, as the Keidanren, or the Japan Business Foundation, proposes, that ‘overtime work should not be paid to workers whose annual income counts 4 million Yen’.

The new law permits the maximum length of overtime work as 100 hours monthly, which exceeds the norm of Karoshi, or a death due to overwork. Certification of a Karoshi will be made more difficult after the legislation, thus more deaths will be produced in the workplaces. In Republic of Korea (ROK), where citizens succeeded recently in changing the government leadership by through Candle Revolution, the maximum length of weekly working hours was shortened from 68 hours to 52. A clear difference is found between the two countries. In ROK the government supports workers to enjoy dinners with their families.

The issues of irregular workers and a rule on an equal pay for an equal work were left intact. The legislation has proven a fact that the Japanese government and ruling parties consider workers as a tool to make profits, exposing their repulsion to humanity.

Government Prefers Casino Law to Responses to Disaster

The government, after extending the term of Diet Session, forced to approve the Casino Act although the criminal code prohibits gambling. A press report says that a US casino business owner bought tickets of dinner parties of those MPs who promote a gamble law. The bill passed the Diet at the night when the worst, torrential rainfalls hit the western region of Japan where 224 people were dead and 12 were missing (as of June 22). It was an emergency.

As for management of casinos, it will be entrusted to US casino industries. The enactment means tenacity of Prime Minister Abe who wants to grip state politics and revise the Constitution, taking advantage of the US patronage.

Now a group of Premier Abe dominates the entire regime, which disturbs the Diet’s rights of investigation, scrutiny of administration and legislative function to work properly. Commercial media have been converted to government-sponsored announcers from journalism. These facts certainly attributes to the controversial small constituency election system and the subsidy scheme to favor political parties. 

Furthermore, poverty and gaps between the rich and the poor endorse these facts. A minority group monopolizes social wealth and rules the nation, while the vast majority of people responsible for counterattack suffer from difficulties in their livelihood. Politics is far from their daily life. People feel uneasiness more acutely to become radicalized to be absorbed into populism of ultra rightists.

August 7, 2018