Monday, December 18, 2017, 14:30 - 15:30
Language: The speech and Q & A will be in Japanese with English interpretation
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's gamble in forcing a snap election in October amid cronyism scandals that shook leadership paid off with his ruling coalition maintaining a super-majority in the House of Representatives -- as the opposition camp was fragmented by the break-up of the center-left Democratic Party.
Despite wide-spread public disillusionment with Abe's security and economic policies, he appears ready to push ahead with his drive to alter Japan's pacifist post-war constitution by providing an indisputable legal status to the country's so-called Self-Defense Forces. He has also vowed to cooperate "100 percent" with Donald Trump's America in the face of a North Korean nuclear threat.
The collapse of the main opposition Democratic Party, just ahead of its pre-election merger with an emerging group led by then popular and conservative Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, has led its liberal wing to separately form the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP). The CDP beat the odds to become the biggest opposition force in the lower house with 55 seats, albeit dwarfed by 284 seats held by Abe's Liberal Democratic Party.
The FCCJ has invited CDP leader Yukio Edano to speak about his nascent party's activities and what kind of role it will play in the shifting political landscape. Edano, 53, who served as chief cabinet secretary, economic minister and party secretary general when the Democrats held power from 2009 to 2012, has advocated electoral cooperation among opposition parties and denounced what he calls Abe's disregard for constitutional democracy.
A lawyer elected to the lower house nine times since 1993, Edano has described his stance as "neither right nor left" calling himself a "liberal as well as a conservative."
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Professional Activities Committee
