2026 POLLS: SDP Chief Vows to Better People’s Lives

Tokyo, Jan. 26 (Jiji Press)–Mizuho Fukushima, leader of the Social Democratic Party, intends to highlight the minor opposition party’s stance of concentrating on bettering people’s lives in Japan in the upcoming election for the House of Representatives. “At a time when soaring defense spending is weighing on health care, nursing care and education, we will emphasize that ‘Your tax money should be used for yourselves,'” Fukushima said in a recent interview. The party will specifically call for “reducing the consumption tax rate to zero, reviewing labor laws, improving work conditions for nonregular employees and fundamentally changing how tax money is spent,” she went on to say. Fukushima labeled Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s abrupt move to break up the all-important lower chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament, for a snap election as a “selfish dissolution (of the Diet).” If the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party), win a majority of seats in the election, they would claim that Takaichi, in office only for about three months, “has been endorsed” as the national leader and that all problems posed by the ruling bloc, Takaichi and her administration “have gained public understanding,” Fukushima said. The SDP head was mentioning political funds scandals chiefly involving LDP lawmakers, cozy ties between the Unification Church cult and politicians, Takaichi’s “Taiwan contingency” statements that stiffened the Chinese government and worsened Japan-China relations, and a senior government official’s informal remarks suggesting Japan go nuclear. Asked to evaluate the Takaichi government, Fukushima said the prime minister “has so far done nothing but gaffes” while expressing fears that Japan “may be put on the path to war.” Takaichi would have “no hesitation in recognizing a survival-threatening situation and using military force,” as well as in “changing for the worse” the pacifist Constitution of the country, she pointed out. She also criticized the LDP for “flip-flopping” on its stance against consumption tax cuts and cash benefits as part of anti-inflation measures, calling the party “totally treacherous.” On a new centrist party formed by most of Lower House lawmakers from the leading opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito, which dissolved its long-held alliance with the LDP after Takaichi took the helm of the ruling party, Fukushima said its “people first” slogan is “understandable.” However, the new Centrist Reform Alliance party shouldn’t have given the nod to a survival-threatening situation as a legal factor to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, she stressed. The CDP reversed its stance of opposing the survival-threatening situation clause in the country’s 2015 security legislation as “unconstitutional” when joining hands with Komeito, which helped enactment of the legislation as a ruling party. “There is no way to accept something considered unconstitutional 10 years ago as constitutional now,” Fukushima said. Moreover, she denounced the new party’s approval of the construction of a replacement facility for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma air base in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, on reclaimed land off the Henoko district of Nago, another city in the southernmost prefecture. In the Feb. 8 election, the SDP, which currently holds two seats in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, aims to win three seats in the Lower House so the party will be eligible for state grants for political parties again, Fukushima said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]