2nd Ishiba Cabinet Formed

Having been elected as the 103rd Prime Minister of Japan, without majority votes in the House of Representatives, Shigeru Ishiba formed his second Cabinet on November 11th, which is making no difference from his first Cabinet except replacement of three Ministers. Given a hung parliament in the Lower House, it is not easy for the new cabinet to pass bills to implement its policies. Ishiba began policy talks with the opposition leaders to seek favors in Diet affairs.


Among the ministers of the first Ishiba Cabinet, formed in October 1st, Minister of Justice, Hideki Makihara, and Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Yasuhiro Ozato, lost their seats in the general election of the House of Representatives on October 27th.

Although there is no rule that non-legislator cannot be appointed to a minister, Makihara and Ozato declined to continue to be the ministers, supposedly to leave their seats to some other hopeful lawmakers.

 

Ishiba appointed Keisuke Suzuki, who led discussion in the Liberal Democratic Party for political reform following the slush fund scandal, for Justice Minister and Taku Eto for Agriculture Minister who had experienced the position. Ishiba accepted Komeito’s offer to replace Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Tetsuo Saito, who assumed the chief representative of the party, to Hiromasa Nakano, a lawmaker in Komeito who had been working for the ministry for ten years before becoming a politician.

 

In the press conference after forming his second Cabinet, Ishiba stressed politeness and modesty in dealing with issues, expecting cooperation from the opposition parties. “Given a severe result of the general election, the LDP needs to make a fresh start. I will return to the basics to make every effort to promote political reform,” said Ishiba.

 

Before the election for nominating a prime minister in the Diet, Ishiba had meetings with opposition leaders respectively. In the meeting with the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, Yoshihiko Noda, Ishiba asked cooperation in political reform. Noda demanded to discuss revisioning of Political Funds Control Act in the Committee on Political Reform, which will be chaired by the CDPJ in the Lower House, and pass the bill by the end of this year.

 

In this respect, the leader of the Democratic Party for the People, Yuichiro Tamaki, requested Ishiba to set a table for discussion outside the committee. The opposition parties are not only united in electing a prime minister, but the process of implementing political reform, which is a shared cause for them to protest the leading coalition.

 

In the meeting with Ishiba, Tamaki requested raising threshold of income tax from 1.03 million yen of annual income and removing restriction of subsidy for gasoline price. However, the ministries are reluctant to accept his request, because of fiscal difficulty. Those requests were not included in the draft of economic stimulus package, which Ishiba plans to deliver later this year. 

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