LDP, DPJ agree on posts for upper house panels

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the major opposition Democratic Party of Japan reached an agreement Wednesday on how to allocate key standing committee posts in the House of Councillors.

The agreement came on the last day of a six-day extraordinary Diet session called after the July 21 upper house election, in which the LDP and its coalition partner, New Komeito, won a combined majority and ended the divided Diet.

On Tuesday night, the LDP had submitted a resolution in the upper house calling for the dismissal of the chairmen of the Cabinet Committee, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and the Financial Affairs Committee.

Through a meeting of senior LDP and DPJ officials Wednesday, the two parties agreed that the DPJ will give up the posts for the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Financial Affairs Committee.

The two parties also agreed that the DPJ will continue to chair the Cabinet Committee. Following the agreement, the LDP withdrew the resolution and the upper house selected the chairs of its standing committees.

At a senior official meeting of the upper house steering committee, the LDP agreed to give the chair for the Committee on Land and Transport to the DPJ and the post for the Committee on Oversight of Administration to Your Party, an opposition group.

The meeting also decided to reassign the chair post for the Committee on Fundamental National Policies to the DPJ from Your Party.

After confrontation over the committee post allocations, the LDP and the DPJ reached a compromise due to concern about possible public criticism, observers said.

Abe urged to fire Aso

Five opposition parties in a joint statement on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to dismiss Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso over his recent controversial remarks relating to Nazis.

The remarks were “an inexcusable verbal abuse that has greatly undermined the international community’s trust in Japan,” the statement said.

The DPJ, Your Party, the Japanese Communist Party, the People’s Life Party and the Social Democratic Party adopted the statement after Aso, who doubles as finance minister and financial services minister, said late last month that Japan could learn from the Nazis’ technique for amending a nation’s constitution.