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On October 31, DPJ Secretary General Akihiro Ohata held a press conference at party headquarters. He referred to the release by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of diplomatic records regarding negotiations on the reversion of Okinawa, and stated this was an “achievement of the DPJ administration”.
During the DPJ’s term of office, the issue of a secret nuclear agreement between Japan and the US was investigated under Minister for Foreign Affairs Katsuya Okada. Following this, under Minister for Foreign Affairs Koichiro Gemba, a MOFA instruction regarding regulations for releasing diplomatic records was established, with a rule introduced that diplomatic records would be made public, in principle, after thirty years had passed. The LDP administration is currently continuing with this practice, and the documents released on this occasion had been made public in accordance with this rule.
In 1976, MOFA started, as a voluntary measure, to release a portion of diplomatic documents once thirty years had passed since they had been produced, but the decision of whether to release particular documents had been made arbitrarily by bureaucrats, and Ohata said that “The process for the public release of diplomatic documents was consolidated for the first time under the DPJ administration through an instruction issued by the Minister for Foreign Affairs.”
In relation to this, Ohata also commented on the proposal for a special secrets protection law, saying, “As you are aware, the DPJ also considered the matter of protecting secrets when we were in office, but we judged that it was first necessary to improve the system for disclosing information.”
He pointed out the following issues regarding the special secrets protection legislation proposed by the Abe administration: “What information would be classified as secret by government institutions, and would a third party be able to check this?”, “Wouldn’t it end up being possible to extend the limitation on disclosing information indefinitely?” and “Would unclear guidelines lead newsgathering activities to atrophy?” Ohata stated, “It is important to properly establish a system for information disclosure in order to protect citizens’ right to know. Public concerns regarding the special secrets protection legislation have become evident during Diet debate, and I believe we must engage in rigorous questioning in order to ensure that the people’s right to know and the freedom of expression are protected.”
With regard to the matter of Diet reform, Ohata reported that LDP Secretary General Ishiba, in a meeting of the secretaries general and Diet affairs chiefs of the ruling and opposition parties held earlier that day, had said that “We would like to engage in Diet reform. We are interested in hearing the opinions of each of your parties. I would like to use discussions between the Diet affairs chiefs as a forum for discussions, and would definitely like to implement those points where opinions are shared and concrete proposals can be made. In the final stages I would like us to reconvene a meeting of secretaries general and Diet affairs chiefs and move to implementation.” Ohata said that the various parties had agreed to this proposal and that the issue was scheduled to be discussed by a meeting of Diet affairs chiefs.
Asked for his opinion on personnel appointments subject to approval by the Diet, Ohata responded, “I am particularly concerned about the selection of governors for the board of NHK. There are several persons considered to be extremely close to Prime Minister Abe on the list of candidates presented for Diet approval this time.” He pointed out, “Article 1 of the Broadcast Law aims ‘to regulate broadcasting so as to conform to public welfare and to achieve its sound development’ in accordance with the principle of ‘guaranteeing the impartiality, truth and autonomy of broadcasting’, and so this would seem to infringe ‘the impartiality’ mentioned in the legislation.” He added that two of the proposed candidates belonged to a group of private individuals established to support Abe’s bid to become Prime Minister, and one was a former home tutor of the Prime Minister, and said there was a need to further scrutinize the proposals including with relation to Article 1 of the Broadcast Law.
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