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On July 16, an enlarged meeting of the DPJ Policy Research Committee executive was held inside the Diet, attended by the Chair, Deputy Chair, Senior Vice Chair, and Vice Chairs of the Policy Research Committee, as well as the Chairs of the various policy subcommittees. For approximately one and a half hours the assembled Diet members discussed the future functions and organisation of the Policy Research Committee, and discussed fine-tuning policies in response to the result of the House of Councillors election.
At the start of the meeting, Policy Research Committee Chair Koichiro Gemba (Minister of State for Civil Service Reform, the New Concept of Public Service, and Social Affairs and Gender Equality) said that “drafting of the budget for fiscal 2011 has actually already started”, and reported that the Policy Research Committee executive had already held meetings on July 14 and 15. He explained that in these meetings, the consensus had been that it was difficult to make proposals regarding the budget without carrying out a review of the House of Councillors election, and revealed that such a review had been carried out from a policy perspective on the previous day, July 15, for approximately one and a half hours. Gemba went on to explain that the intention in this meeting was “to carry out a policy review [of the election] that also included the new Chairs of the policy subcommittees”, and that the budget proposals would be made after this had been completed.
Gemba added that “The Prime Minister’s Office had already had a particular schedule in mind, but we wanted to draft budget proposals after completing a policy review, and so I told the Prime Minister yesterday that we would like to proceed on a rather conservative time schedule.”
During the meeting, the criticism was raised that although the House of Councillors Manifesto was based on the 2009 General Election Manifesto, the misconception that “the DPJ has changed its Manifesto” had been conveyed, and the public had received the mistaken impression that the DPJ had broken its election pledges, and this had had a minus impact on the campaign. The assembled members hypothesised that the party had failed to clearly convey to the electorate that “the 2009 Manifesto is still valid” and that “the 2009 Manifesto is the basis [for the House of Councillors Manifesto]”.
It was also pointed out that although the DPJ had held town meetings in order to gather opinions from the electorate, and had also created a Manifesto Planning Committee comprising of members from both party and administration, investigating which points needed to be revised in the three study groups under the authority of the Committee, the results of these various efforts had not necessary been reflected in the finished House of Councillors Manifesto.
The opinion was also raised that remarks made by Prime Minister Naoto Kan regarding the consumption tax were perceived as being too sudden, and that this had also influenced the result of the election.
Discussions toward drafting the budget will begin in the next meeting, scheduled for July 20.
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