Japan’s contentious plan to double the sales tax cleared the final hurdle in a parliamentary vote on Friday after Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda promised to bring forward an election likely to end his party’s three-year rule.
The passage of the plan in the opposition-controlled upper house is a result of a rare political compromise and a breakthrough for Japan, trapped for years in a cycle of revolving-door governments and policy paralysis.
“Politicians tend to delay or avoid policies that increase the burden on the public, but we have to do this to ensure that there is a sustainable source of funds for our welfare system,” Noda said.
“Europe’s debt crisis shows the dramatic damage that a country can suffer once confidence is lost in public finances,” he added.
Noda was speaking as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside his office for a weekly protest against his drive to restart reactors shut down after the Fukushima disaster.
“Each party involved was determined to send a message to the world that Japan’s politics is functioning, and that an effort is being made to steer clear of Japan’s fiscal collapse,” said Natsuo Yamaguchi, who represented small opposition party New Komeito in 11th-hour talks to save the tax plan.
However, as the focus now shifts to the elections, analysts expect horse-trading over the exact timing of the polls to stall any further significant policy initiatives.
The plan to bring the tax to 10 percent by 2015 has been billed as a test of Japan’s ability and resolve to tackle its snowballing debt that already tops two years’ worth of its economic output, a record among industrialized nations.
It is also a victory for Noda, though a bittersweet one.
The former finance minister and the ruling Democrats’ third leader in as many years made the tax plan his top goal and has worked relentlessly to achieve it, saying he was ready to sacrifice his political career if necessary.
With his offer to call an election “soon,” he may have just done that given the Democrats’ likely drubbing at the polls.
In its 2009 landslide victory the party rode a wave of public disillusionment with half a century of nearly non-stop rule by the rival Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Now it faces a similar backlash over broken promises, the government’s confused response to last year’s tsunami and nuclear crisis and Noda’s embrace of unpopular causes such as the tax hike or restarts of nuclear reactors.
A poll earlier this week showed only 13 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the LPD. However, with support for their main rivals at 23 percent and nearly half of voters undecided, some form of a wobbly coalition and more muddling through on policies and reforms is a likely outcome.
Keen to seize the momentum, the opposition is threatening no-confidence and censure motions if Noda drags his feet on the elections while trying to pass more bills, including one needed to sell new bonds to finance the budget deficit.
On Thursday, most opposition lawmakers skipped a vote on a no-confidence motion against Noda’s cabinet filed by several fringe parties, allowing the LPD to defeat it comfortably.
The lower house term runs through to August next year and some commentators said Noda might want to delay the polls until next year after he drafts the next budget.
However, that may be impossible because of the opposition pressure.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing