- The original objective
of this Special Session was to adopt the 2nd supplementary budget
and the small and medium enterprise bill in order to ensure the
full recovery from the long-term stagnation and to restore the
employment security. However, the coalition government, consisting
of the LDP, Komei Party and the Liberty Party, steered the Diet
based on the party interest. They tried to pass the pension reform
bill and the Diet reform bill, owing to their numerical power,
which RENGO believes should be denounced.
The opposition parties, including the Democratic
Party of Japan and the Japan Social Democratic Party, strongly
opposed to the tyrannical politics by the coalition government
and blocked the adoption of the above-mentioned bills that were
decided to be discussed in the following session. RENGO highly
evaluates such opposition.
- RENGO requested
that the 2nd supplementary budget should include the creation
of 1.4 million jobs, the reinforcement of the base of employment
insurance in the view of assisting the unemployed and the improvement
of pension, medical and caring insurance schemes in order to
ease the sense of insecurity. However, the adopted budget are
still focused on public works amounted to 3.5 trillion yen. It
lacks concrete measures for job creation and is not able to overcome
the current situation of the unemployment. Moreover, the budget
includes 900 billion yen to reduce/freeze the premium of the
caring insurance, which denies the effort of local governments
and hampers the establishment of the base of caring services.
This should be strongly criticized.
- In particular,
we should pursue the question of the government's responsibility
for ramming the bill on pension reform that proposed the reduction
of the pension level and postponed the fundamental reform for
the short period of the session.
It
should take sufficient time to discuss the pension reform taking
into account its influence on the livelihood of the people. Rengo
has organized campaigns, such as sit-in continued for 13 days,
to oppose the insincerity of the coalition government. Such action
reinforced the cooperation between the opposition parties, which
led to the failure in adopting the bill in this session. RENGO
will continue struggling for the fundamental pension reform.
- Politics introduced
by the coalition government in this Diet session can be considered
as self-interest oriented politics based only on the internal
consensus with the government, failing in assuming the responsibility
for challenging the sense of insecurity surrounding the whole
nation.
RENGO is standing on the
interest of 60 million workers, not on the interest of any specific
group. It makes every effort to realize policies and institutions,
particularly in the area of pension and job creation to relieve
the people of the anxiety.
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