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On August 26, DPJ Secretary General Yukio Edano held his regular press conference at party headquarters.
Firstly, he commented on the proposed security legislation, saying, “It is essentially unthinkable for the government to try to force through the Diet legislation which infringes against constitutionalism and against the Constitution, but even the minister responsible does not understand its content. I fail to see the point of debating legislation which government ministers do not themselves understand.”
With regard to the legislation to ban hate-speech, “Last week, we told the ruling parties that we wanted them to reach a resolution on this as soon as possible. A week has passed, but we still have a situation where the ruling parties’ stance is not clear. If a resolution has not been reached I am of the opinion that we will be unable to start discussions regarding revising the Code of Criminal Procedure. We would like the ruling parties to decide their response as soon as possible.”
Edano also commented on share price volatility, saying, “Over the past two and a half years the government has been engaging in economic policies that are over-reliant on fiscal policy. We are now bearing the brunt of that.” He stressed, “I believe that the correct path should be to focus on steady domestic consumption and increasing productivity in the true sense of the word, even if that does not produce an immediate effect.”
Edano went on to discuss the growth strategy that is part of Abenomics, stressing that it had failed to hit its target, “Rather than having had no impact, it has in fact caused things to move in the wrong direction. The labor legislation revision is a perfect example. In order to strengthen the economy, we must increase the productivity of individual workers. To achieve this, we need to improve the skills and abilities of individuals, but increasing the numbers of irregular workers is a policy that will have completely the opposite effect.”
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