The first Diet session for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi after her landslide win in the Lower House election ended after extreme confusion brought about by confrontation between the ruling coalition and opposition over a measure to establish a secondary capital outside of Tokyo.

What became obvious over the five months or so of the Diet session was Takaichi avoiding her responsibility to explain and pushing through bills based on the strength of numbers.

It was also clear that the Liberal Democratic Party had deteriorated as a responsible party because it could not control the prime minister.

Takaichi’s responsibility must be severely questioned for the major distortion in functions of the legislative branch, which must oversee the government as the representative of the people.

LACK OF UNDERSTANDING ABOUT CONSTITUTIONALISM

The belittling of the Diet by the Takaichi administration became clear from when the Lower House held deliberations on the fiscal 2026 budget.

Bending to her insistence that the budget be passed before March 31, when the fiscal year ended, deliberations in the Lower House Budget Committee totaled 59 hours, the shortest over the past 20 years.

Takaichi’s attendance at concentrated deliberations in the budget committees of both Diet chambers, including after the budget passed, was much fewer than past prime ministers.

Only two debates were held in the Diet between Takaichi and the heads of other parties.

It is difficult to believe her assertion that she attended sessions when requested and responded sincerely.

Even some within the LDP openly talked about Takaichi’s dislike of attending Diet sessions.

The Constitution defines the Diet as the highest organ of state power and obligates the prime minister and Cabinet ministers to respond and explain when questions are asked.

Lawmakers question on behalf of the people so the time for such sessions should not be reduced just to suit the prime minister.

The premise of constitutionalism is to have the Constitution define rules that restrain authority to ensure that the freedom and rights of the people are not stripped away by state authority.

That is why a check and balance system separating authority into the legislative, administrative and judicial branches has been established.

Takaichi lacks the understanding about what role she must fulfill as head of the administrative branch in relation to the legislative branch under constitutionalism.

She is not only called on to explain policy in the Diet, but she must also squarely face severe questioning if issues arise related to trust in politics.

In that sense, her handling of media reports about defamatory videos was haphazard and there was no explanation that resolved the suspicions raised by the reports.

While saying testimony from her aide would be submitted in the next few days, it took about a month and was only two days before the Diet session effectively came to an end.

That gave the impression she was just trying to run out the clock to flee from the issue.

RISKY TURN TO NIPPON ISHIN

In the final days of the Diet session, measures that divided public opinion and raised doubts among experts, such as revising the Imperial House Law and penalizing the desecration of the national flag, were hurriedly passed.

That might leave deep scars in society after dividing the people because the moves were nowhere close to achieving a wide consensus.

Takaichi from the first said she would implement policies that might split national opinion in two, but it should be the role of the leader of a nation to seek integration among the public.

Many people are still struggling due to the surge in consumer prices and there is no telling what effect the ongoing tensions in the Middle East will have on domestic and foreign economies.

Amid such a situation, the Takaichi administration focused after passage of the budget on a series of legislation not directly linked to the daily lives of the people, such as bills to strengthen intelligence capabilities, revise the Imperial House Law and penalize desecration of the flag.

All the measures were ones Takaichi was eager to pass and were included in the coalition agreement reached with Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party).

The coalition with Nippon Ishin helped Takaichi who found herself in a difficult situation after Komeito decided to leave the coalition.

She may have felt obligated to return favors to Nippon Ishin by implementing issues that the party has pushed even if there were calls from within her own LDP urging caution or expressing opposition.

In so doing, she placed priority on individual circumstances rather than looking at the big political picture.

While Nippon Ishin’s proposal to cut the number of Lower House seats was tabled, the insistence on passing the measure regarding the secondary capital created unusual confusion in the final days of the Diet session.

At one time, some within the ruling coalition called for extending the Diet session by more than two months to bring about a second vote in the Lower House should the Upper House reject the measure and pass it with two-thirds of the vote.

The confusion postponed the holding within the Diet session of a Lower House Budget Committee session in which Takaichi would attend for concentrated questioning.

Under a parliamentary Cabinet system, the LDP must support the Cabinet.

But the responsibility of its executives who simply went along with Takaichi’s will is grave.

It is unavoidable if the LDP is criticized as being only a subcontracting organ to the prime minister if it only catered to the whims of a prime minister with high support ratings, although there are some recent signs of change, amid a concentration of authority.

WHOSE DIET IS IT?

Although there is an overwhelming difference in the number of seats held in the Lower House, the lack of power on the part of the opposition is serious.

The Centrist Reform Alliance (Chudo), the largest opposition party in the Lower House, is still divided into the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito in the Upper House.

While Chudo voted for strengthening intelligence capabilities and revising the Imperial House Law in the Lower House, the CDP opposed both measures in the Upper House, demonstrating a split in the stance regarding important bills.

Left as is, it will be difficult for the party to serve as an axis to take on the gigantic ruling party.

With the increase in the number of opposition parties, some have sought out cooperation with the ruling coalition to implement some of its policy proposals.

But the role of opposition parties in overseeing the administration and applying the brakes to excessive moves, as well as reflecting the diverse voices of the public in politics, has become more important.

The opposition must hurry with rebuilding and strengthening cooperation.

Functional failure of the Diet where representatives of the people gather is nothing but a crisis of democracy.

The Diet does not belong to the ruling coalition nor to the opposition, but to the people where the sovereign power lies.

All lawmakers must think about that starting point.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 26