Emboldened by Election Victory, LDP Demands Key Diet Posts

Tokyo, Feb. 17 (Jiji Press)–Emboldened by a historic victory in the Feb. 8 House of Representatives election, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is demanding to retake key parliamentary posts. The LDP, which was a minority force before the general election, now controls over two-thirds of the 465 seats in the all-important lower chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament. The party is working to regain key positions within the Diet, such as the head of the Lower House Budget Committee, as well as trying to shorten deliberations so as to enact the government’s regular budget for fiscal 2026 as soon as possible. On Monday, LDP Secretary-General Shunichi Suzuki, his counterpart at the Japan Innovation Party, Hiroshi Nakatsuka, and others affirmed at a meeting in Tokyo that the ruling camp still aims to pass the budget within the current fiscal year ending in March despite the supertight schedule. Budget deliberations at the two Diet chambers usually take about two months. Many believe that the fiscal 2026 budget cannot be enacted by the end of fiscal 2025, given a delay in budget-related proceedings due to last month’s Lower House dissolution for the unusual February election. Still, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, the LDP’s president, told other senior party members Friday that she has not given up on the budget’s passage within fiscal 2025. Takaichi’s bullish attitude is backed by the prospect that the LDP-JIP coalition is set to occupy many top posts of Lower House committees after the election victory. In particular, the LDP hopes to take back the posts of the Lower House Budget Committee chair and Constitution Commission chair, which were relinquished to the opposition side following the LDP’s defeat in the 2024 Lower House election. After the latest poll, the ruling camp initially requested that it head all Lower House committees. But in response to a backlash from the main opposition Centrist Reform Alliance, the ruling bloc conceded slightly, agreeing to give the opposition side the posts of chair at the disciplinary committee and the special committee on consumer affairs. The two sides have yet to reach an agreement, as the Centrist Reform Alliance says that four committee chief posts were allocated to the opposition side under the administration of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of the LDP. An early passage of the fiscal 2026 budget will depend on the deliberation time at the Lower House Budget Committee. Since Abe’s second administration, which lasted from December 2012 to September 2020, budget-related deliberations have taken about 80 hours in many cases. Last year, 92 hours were spent under the LDP-led minority government. Senior officials within the Takaichi administration believe that such discussions could be shorter, given that deliberations on a fiscal 2007 budget lasted for 66 hours and 30 minutes. A senior LDP member close to Takaichi said, “The opposition parties spend most of their question time criticizing the government, something that has nothing to do with the budget.” Opposition parties, however, are not on the same page over the budget-related deliberation time. A veteran Centrist Reform Alliance member said, “We need sufficient time to discuss the country’s largest-ever budget.” On the other hand, Democratic Party for the People chief Yuichiro Tamaki in a television program on Sunday voiced understanding toward the administration and the ruling parties, saying, “We’d like to reach a decision while considering the people’s livelihood as our top priority.” In an article she wrote in 2010, when the LDP was an opposition party and the administration was led by the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan, Takaichi said that Diet operations had proceeded at a pace set by a “high-handed” DPJ, backed by the sheer difference in the number of parliamentary seats held by the ruling and opposition sides, resulting in budget-related deliberations ending with “many unresolved issues.” She may be criticized for inconsistency with this past commentary if her party uses its numerical superiority in the Lower House to its full advantage. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]