Almost 90% of DPJ's revenue will depend on government subsidy

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Almost 90% of DPJ's revenue will depend on government subsidy

In the aftermath of its landslide victory in the August 30 House of Representatives general election, the Democratic Party of Japan will receive an estimated 17.3 billion yen in government subsidy for FY 2010. The amount is much larger than the party's FY 2009 revenue.

It is a well-known fact that most of the party's income has come from the government subsidy.

In the next fiscal year 87.6 percent of the DPJ's revenue will come from tax revenue amounting to 250 yen paid for by every Japanese citizen.

The DPJ during the election campaign called for the elimination of wasteful uses of tax revenue and for the realization of politics dedicated primarily to improving people's livelihoods, and promised voters to review the national budget item by item.

The system of government subsidies to political parties forces every citizen to make political donations to parties that they do not necessarily support, in violation of the constitutional rights to "freedom of thought and conscience".

DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio has said that it is imoral for politicians to depend only on government subsidies.

The DPJ will be called upon to state clearly whether it will keep receiving the government subsidy despite the fact that this system is the largest part of the wasteful use of tax money and represents a distortion of democracy.

The Japanese Communist Party has consistently refused to receive such a subsidy and demands its abolition so that tax revenue can be used to abolish the "beneficiary-pays principle" provisions from the law to assist the self-support of the disabled, the system that forces the disabled to pay the costs for services they receive.

- Akahata, September 6, 2009