Japan Press Weekly

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2012 October 24 - 30 [TOKYO]

DPJ members resigning from party in Tokyo assembly

With the next election just around the corner, Democratic Party of Japan members in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly are leaving the party one after another.

The DPJ became the largest party in the metropolitan assembly in the 2009 election, but 8 out of 54 members have quit the party since then.

In August this year, assembly member Yanagase Hirofumi and Kurishita Yoshiyuki left the DPJ and joined former member of the Liberal Democratic Party Noda Kazusa to found Tokyo Ishin no Kai, a local party seeking affiliation with Nippon Ishin no Kai led by Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru.

An official of the Tokyo Democratic Party of Japan said that those who have resigned from the party “only think about how to survive the election next year, and we think there may be more resignations to come.”

In the national Diet, 8 DPJ members who were elected to the House of Representatives in Tokyo in 2009 have left the party since the beginning of this year.

A DPJ Tokyo assembly member, who shares his constituency with one of the former DPJ members in the Lower House, complained, “Our supporters criticize our stance on the issues of the consumption tax hike and reactivation of nuclear power reactors. The support rate drops, and criticism is strong from non-affiliated voters too.”

In Tokyo, the DPJ’s breach of election promises faces mounting criticism. In its manifesto for the 2009 Tokyo Metropolitan assembly election, the party called for a halt to the relocation of the Tsukiji fish market to a soil-polluted location in the Toyosu district.

On the first day of the election campaign, then DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio held a speech in front of the Tsukiji market and said, “The only way to stop the relocation is to achieve a DPJ victory in the election.”

However, in March this year, the DPJ supported the budget allocation of the transfer of the fish market together with the LDP and the Komei Party. The party leadership punished 11 out of 50 DPJ members who voted against the budget plan.

The DPJ has also met with severe criticism from Tokyoites by breaking its election promise to maintain public children’s hospitals.