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On April 27, the Secretary General of the DPJ Caucus in the House of Councillors Yoshimitsu Takashima held his regular press conference inside the Diet. He commented on the final stages of the current Diet session following the Golden Week holiday period, saying that the schedule would be tight, but he would make every effort to ensure that all legislation would be passed before the end of the session.
Takashima went on to say that a team led by Mitsuru Sakurai, Chair of the DPJ Policy Discussion Committee in the House of Councillors, would accept specific requests from individual Diet members with regard to lifting the ban on Internet campaigning, and revealed that the party would make every effort to pass a proposal by the committee Chair that would be acceptable to all the political parties.
With regard to the issue of Futenma, Takashima was asked whether the party itself had received any petitions from Okinawa. He responded, “The members of the organizing committee for the Okinawa Prefectural rally [held to call for Futenma to be moved outside of Okinawa] who visited us today, are not fixed on the issue being resolved by the end of May. Rather, they were of the opinion that if the Prime Minister were to make the decision to move the base outside of Okinawa or of Japan, then it would be preferable to deal with the issue over a longer period of time. In any case, once a decision has been made, as the ruling party we must exercise our responsibility in obtaining the understanding of the United States and the local people.”
Takashima was asked about the progress made in drafting the Manifesto for the forthcoming House of Councillors election. He replied, “At the present time, discussions in each of the study groups are progressing extremely well. Each study group is in the process of drawing up their final proposals and I think that they will be able to submit them following the Golden Week holiday.”
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