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On February 3, DPJ President Banri Kaieda held his regular press conference at party headquarters, expressing his opinions about such issues as the interpellatory sessions in both Houses of the Diet, and the debate regarding the supplementary budget, as well as the forthcoming party convention to be held in Fukushima at the weekend.
Regarding the interpellatory sessions and the supplementary budget debate, Kaieda said, “As you have probably realized, the interpellatory sessions ended up being much shorter than the originally allotted time. Those posing questions used their time to the full, but the Prime Minister’s answers were short. If they were packed with content despite their brevity that would be fine, but they were lacking in substance and slipslod. The Committee on Budget takes the form of one answer for each question, so schedule-wise it is proceeding according to the allotted time, but if we examine the content of the answers given then they are extremely rough responses. [One response] was that the shutdown of nuclear reactors had caused imports of natural gas and the like to rise by 3.6 trillion yen, but that also includes increases stemming from the fall in the value of the yen. Not just the cost of substitutes for nuclear reactors, but also the fuel for existing fossil-fuel reactors, and the raw materials for town gas have increased.”
Kaieda went on to discuss the party convention, which is to be held on February 8 and 9 in Kooriyama, Fukushima prefecture. He said that the schedule for the convention had been confirmed in a meeting of the party executive just prior to the press conference, and stated, “We will undertake revisions of the party regulations and map out a mid-term position on policy issue. Up until now policy issues related to national politics have been decided mainly by Diet members, but we will include local assembly members in the process and obtain a party-wide consensus.”
Kaieda was asked for his opinion regarding the announcement by Osaka city governor Toru Hashimoto that he would resign and run again for office in the ensuing elections. He responded, “I watched the press conference live on the Internet wondering just what the content was going to be, but my honest feeling was that Governor Hashimoto’s reason for resigning in the middle of his term and standing for reelection did not come across very clearly.” Kaieda showed his puzzlement, saying, “I wonder whether there wasn’t another method rather than an election.” With regard to the DPJ’s reaction to the forthcoming election, he stated, “I have not yet received a report from the party headquarters in Osaka prefecture. I would like to hear the results of the meeting held today by the prefectural headquarters as soon as possible,” and added, “In any case we will respect the decision of DPJ Osaka.”
Kaieda was asked to comment regarding the fact that of the approximately 460 billion yen that was cut from the budget for fiscal 2014 by the Abe administration having been judged as a “waste of money”, approximately 360 billion yen had been restored in the supplementary budget, something which had come to light as a result of investigations by the DPJ. He said, “According to our various investigations, the amount of budgetary funds that were cut from the original budget and then restored is 360 billion yen, but we frequently see this kind of thing. Slimming down the main budget and then padding out the supplementary budget makes one wonder what the main budget is for, and is a major issue from the point of view of fiscal discipline.”
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