Tokyo, Sept. 22 (Jiji Press)–Hideki Murai, who became new parliamentary affairs chief of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party last week, is drawing attention from both the ruling and opposition sides. The 46-year-old has been elected to the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament, six times but has never served as a cabinet minister. It is very rare for a person with no cabinet experience to be named the party’s Diet affairs leader. The choice of Murai by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, also LDP president, for the important party position therefore is believed to reflect the Japanese leader’s intention to manage parliamentary business at the initiative of the prime minister’s office. The opposition bloc is increasingly concerned that there will be more cases in which parliamentary proceedings are run in a high-handed way. Murai was picked as the LDP’s Diet affairs chief as part of a reshuffle of the party’s executive lineup on Wednesday. He attended a meeting of Diet affairs heads of the ruling and opposition parties for the first time on Friday, where the participants agreed to facilitate Diet reform. “Voters are pinning high hopes, so I will steadily work on advancing the enhancement and improving the efficiency of Diet deliberations,” he told reporters after the meeting. A former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Murai is known as an advocate of Diet reform. He has argued, “The prime minister should devote more time to policy decisions and diplomacy than to parliamentary meetings.” Criticizing opposition parties’ tactic of blocking or delaying the enactments of bills by rejecting or deferring parliamentary deliberations as meaningless, Murai played a role in the work to draw up a proposal in 2018 that Diet deliberation schedules be determined through authority if the ruling and opposition camps cannot reach agreement. Murai became the LDP’s chief deputy Diet affairs head in 2024 and engaged in coordination between the ruling and opposition sides, but he refused to take the conventional strategy of paying full consideration to the opposition camp. During the special Diet session that ended in July this year, Murai denounced the opposition side’s boycotting of Diet debates as “outdated.” Murai’s stance caught the attention of Takaichi, who failed in her attempt to forcefully push ahead with Diet reform when she was serving as chair of the Lower House steering committee. Since taking office as prime minister in October last year, Takaichi has been sometimes reluctant to attend Diet debates. She is also believed to have been frustrated with LDP officials in charge of Diet affairs who do not act according to her wishes. The prime minister apparently believes that it would be relatively easy to have Murai, who does not have enough experience in Diet affairs coordination, act in line with her desires. The appointment of Murai as Diet affairs chief shows Takaichi’s intention of “doing things as the prime minister’s office wants,” an LDP source said. Opposition parties are increasingly alarmed. In the extraordinary Diet session expected to be convened Oct. 5, the ruling and opposition camps are likely to clash over contentious bills such as one for reducing the consumption tax rate for food to 1 pct from 8 pct for two years from April 2027. Opposition parties’ resistance will likely be limited, however, as about three-fourths of the Lower House seats are held by the LDP and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party. A source related to the opposition Democratic Reform Party warned, “The LDP will likely try to pass bills with the power of numbers without taking time to reach a consensus (with opposition parties).” Still, with the ruling parties continuing to lack a majority in the Senate, debates in the Diet’s upper chamber, formerly called the House of Councillors, could stall if the LDP-JIP coalition proceeds with deliberations in a high-handed way in the Lower House without compromising with the opposition bloc at all. LDP member Junichi Ishii, who has deep connections with opposition parties, was removed from the post of secretary-general for LDP lawmakers in the Senate last week, leading to a party official lamenting that “we would have no efficient liaison if coordination between the ruling and opposition sides is deadlocked.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
