There May Be Differences After All

Under the cabinets of Koizumi Jun'ichiro and Abe Shinzo, the Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition government was in the position the current Democratic Party of Japan-led coalition finds itself: in possession of majorities in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. During the first 10 months of the Abe Cabinet at least, the then opposition parties screamed in impotent rage as the LDP-led coalition railroaded every bill through committee and then through the full Houses with little or no debate.

Today the House of Representatives will pass the 2010 budget, the first budget compiled under the DPJ's radically new politician-led compilation process. Despite the purported revolutionary in the way this bill has been drafted, we have not heard the slightest whimper of complaint about the DPJ-led coalition's management of the committee debates over it. Indeed, none of the opposition parties have made a single complaint about the DPJ-led coalition's management of the debates over any bill currently under consideration.

Either the LDP and the New Komeito do not know (and the Communists have forgotten) how to complain about the way the committee meetings are being run or there is nothing about the way the committee chairmen are running their committees that merit complaint.

Or so it seems...