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On September 2, DPJ Vice President Yoriko Madoka met with a delegation led by New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Bill English at party headquarters. The meeting was also attended by Director General of the International Department Tetsundo Iwakuni and Vice Director General Masamitsu Naito.
At the start of the meeting, Madoka welcomed the delegation and expressed her pleasure that a genuine change of government had been realised and that she was able to greet them as a member of the ruling party. She further referred to the DPJ’s intention to shift the emphasis from “concrete to people” in the wake of the economic crisis that has enveloped the world since the Lehman shock. She said that for Japan, as a country without natural resources, human resources are an important resource, and explained that DPJ policies emphasising investment in such areas had been supported by the electorate.
English asked what expectations the electorate had of the DPJ. Iwakuni replied that the LDP government which had been in power up until now had been bureaucrat-led, and although under normal circumstances Diet members who had received a license to govern from the people should be in the driving seat, in Japan the bureaucrats have been in the driving seat and politicians have been confined to the passenger seat. He said that the Japanese people had now realised what had been going on, and that this had led to a change of government occurring at the recent general election.
Naito said that the voter turnout at the election was high, at 69%, and this was a sign of the people’s dissatisfaction with the current mode of governance and their expectations for a change of government. He added that for the DPJ, which had won the House of Councillors election two years ago to become the largest party in the Upper House, a victory in the House of Councillors election next year was indispensable.
Finally, Madoka commented that relations between Japan and New Zealand had always been friendly and that the DPJ intended to work to create an even more friendly and cooperative relationship between the two countries in the future. The meeting ended in a convivial atmosphere with exchanges of handshakes between the two sides.
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