Japan enacts fiscal 2010 extra budget for economic stimulus+

TOKYO, Nov. 27 Kyodo -
An extra budget for fiscal 2010 to finance a 5 trillion yen stimulus package
was enacted Friday evening, amid growing tensions between the government and
opposition parties.
The budget was voted down in a plenary session of the opposition-controlled
upper house. But the bill, already approved by the House of Representatives
last week, later cleared the Diet given that the chamber can override a
decision by the upper house under the Constitution.
''I'm really glad that the extra budget deeply connected to the lives of the
people has been enacted,'' Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters.
The budget, which entails 4.4 trillion yen in actual spending, was put together
in an attempt to prop up Japan's economy beset by persistent deflation and the
yen's recent rise, with a focus placed on job creation.
The government says the package will have the effect of adding about 0.6
percentage point to Japan's gross domestic product growth in real terms, in
addition to creating or protecting between 450,000 and 500,000 jobs.
Amid fiscal constraints, the latest stimulus was created without relying on new
issuance of government bonds for the first time in more than a decade.
The enactment took place at a time when Kan is increasingly struggling with a
divided Diet, with his Democratic Party of Japan holding the majority in the
lower house, but not in the House of Councillors.
Kan was able to pass the budget, the biggest agenda item for the ongoing
extraordinary Diet session, but rifts between the government led by the DPJ and
the opposition bloc have been widening in recent weeks.
The main opposition Liberal Democratic Party introduced censure motions against
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku and transport minister Sumio Mabuchi
and they were passed by the House of Councillors in the middle of the night.
The LDP and other opposition parties argue that Sengoku and Mabuchi have harmed
Japan's national interest by mishandling the fallout from collisions between a
Chinese trawler and Japanese patrol vessels off the Senkaku Islands in
September, which reignited a territorial row between Tokyo and Beijing.
The opposition bloc has also been criticizing Sengoku for his recent remarks
pertaining to Japan's Self-Defense Forces.
The motions are not binding but carry heavy political weight. Until now, only
three censure motions had been approved in the upper house in the postwar
period.
The three LDP lawmakers who faced a censure motion -- former Prime Minister
Taro Aso, former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Fukushiro Nukaga, who was then
Defense Agency chief -- could not stay in their posts for long after it was
passed.
If Sengoku and Mabuchi stay in their posts, it is possible tensions between the
ruling and opposition parties will escalate and Kan could face a political
deadlock in the 150-day ordinary Diet session due to start in January, in which
he needs to get the budget for fiscal 2011 passed.
Amid falling support ratings for Kan's government, some DPJ lawmakers say that
a minor Cabinet reshuffle, including ousting Sengoku and Mabuchi, is inevitable
before the next ordinary Diet session.
Kan, however, told a Diet session Friday he is ''definitely not thinking of
removing'' Sengoku.
Kan also said he does not foresee any extension of the current Diet session
beyond next Friday in light of slim chances of enacting bills because of the
challenge from the opposition camp.
''It is quite hard to pass bills without the approval of the opposition bloc
given the reversal of positions between the ruling and opposition parties in
the upper house,'' even if the session is extended, Kan told the upper house's
budget panel.
==Kyodo
2010-11-27 00:52:07


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