The change to the planned date for convening the upcoming extraordinary Diet session reveals a communication breakdown between the Prime Minister's Office and the ruling parties.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is set to deliver his first policy speech in the upcoming session, which was scheduled to start on Oct. 23 but was moved to Oct. 26.
The Diet session schedule is usually determined by deputy chief cabinet secretaries and the diet affairs committee chairpersons in the ruling parties. Inadequate coordination between them is likely to cause anxiety in political circles.
Because the prime minister's travels greatly affect the Diet schedule, the government should notify the ruling parties about overseas trips as soon as possible.
Suga plans to visit Vietnam and Indonesia in mid-October. However, a senior member of the Liberal Democratic Party's Diet Affairs Committee said, "We didn't receive a prior report from Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Manabu Sakai that the prime minister is scheduled to visit Southeast Asian countries in mid-October."
On Sept. 30, Hiroshi Moriyama, chairperson of the LDP Diet Affairs Committee, told Jun Azumi, his counterpart in the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, that the Diet session would convene on Oct. 23 as scheduled.
However, on the same day, the Prime Minister's Office requested a date change to Oct. 26 because of Suga's scheduled trip. In the wake of the request, the ruling and opposition parties were forced to quickly revise the planned start date for the upcoming Diet session.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
