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On May 7, DPJ President Banri Kaieda held his regular press conference. He commented on the main issues to be dealt with in the current Diet session, which has less than two months left, saying, “I believe that in the last part of the session, we must not just deal with the ‘0 more, 5 less’ seats bill but we must of course make sure that we get our own legislative proposal for reducing the actual number of Diet seats passed. Today in the House of Councillors, DPJ Policy Research Committee Chair Sakurai said of this reduction in the number of Diet seats, ‘Please do it properly Prime Minister’, but Prime Minister Abe merely replied that ‘The LDP has indicated its position on this.” This expression seems to imply that some kind of legislation has been submitted to the Diet, but of course the LDP has submitted no such legislation. On the other hand, the bill proposing sweeping cuts in the number of Diet seats submitted by our party to the House of Representatives has been held up (without being referred to the appropriate committee). There is only a short time remaining in this Diet session, and I believe that we should enact legislation to carry out not simply ‘0 more, 5 less’ but a decrease in the number of actual Diet seats has soon as possible during the current session.”
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