Japan’s beleaguered government pledged yesterday to push ahead with its agenda despite a big defeat in the first by-election for parliament since Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda took over.
An opposition-backed candidate won the open seat in Sunday’s contest in western Yamaguchi Prefecture, which had been seen as a referendum on Fukuda’s Cabinet amid dwindling public support.
Senior opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama called the result “a hard blow to the Fukuda government.”
“We made a leap towards the birth of an Ozawa government,” he said, referring to chief opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa.
“We will work tirelessly to put the Cabinet into the corner in order to reflect the public will,” he said.
But the government said that it would press ahead with plans to reinstitute a special gas tax, which expired at the start of the month because the opposition was against it.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said the government tomorrow would use its two-thirds majority in the lower house to override the opposition-run upper house.
“We believe that we will gain voters’ understanding on this matter,” said Machimura, the government’s top spokesman.
Fukuda’s government says that ending the tax, which adds ¥25 (US$0.25) to each liter at the pump, will cost heavily indebted Japan some ¥2.6 trillion a year.
The opposition, arguing that the tax hurts ordinary people, has threatened that if the government rams the bill through it will pass a censure motion urging Fukuda to call early elections.
The opposition threats “would never stop us from parliamentary discussion on bills,” Machimura said.
A censure motion is not legally binding.
Fukuda has repeatedly said that he does not want a general election before Japan hosts the summit of the G8 rich nations in July.
The main opposition Democratic Party has pledged to create a true two-party system in Japan, where Fukuda’s Liberal Democrats have been in power for all but 10 months in a period stretching back more than half a century.
In the by-election on Sunday, Hideo Hiraoka, a former lawmaker backed by the opposition, garnered 116,348 votes.
Shigetaro Yamamoto, a former bureaucrat fielded by the ruling bloc, had 94,404.
It was the first election to national office since Fukuda, a political veteran, replaced the unpopular former prime minister Shinzo Abe in September after the opposition won control of one house of parliament.
But the Fukuda government’s approval has recently tumbled to Abe-like levels of below 30 percent in the wake of a series of scandals and a controversial new insurance program.
Support for the Fukuda government has taken a beating over corruption and other scandals, controversy over the gasoline tax and particularly this month’s start of the new medical plan.
Under the program, the costs of medical insurance are now being directly deducted from the pension benefits of people aged 75 or older.
Pensioners flooded government offices with complaints that the system was confusing and fearing they would pay more.
Machimura acknowledged that the issue had been key to the election loss.
“I think that our insufficient explanation about the medical plan hit us directly,” Machimura said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the plan itself.”
“Whoever takes the office would come up with the same idea,” he said.
Japan has one of the world’s most rapidly ageing populations, raising concerns about how the government will pay for rising medical costs and pension benefits.
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