LDP Alters Abe’s Constitutional Pledge in Japan Election Plans

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Source: Bloomberg

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party is changing its strategy for rewriting the country’s pacifist constitution ahead of parliamentary elections in July, a party executive said.

The LDP will omit from its platform Abe’s pledge to first make it easier to overhaul the constitution by lowering the bar for enacting amendments, party policy chief Sanae Takaichi said today in Tokyo. Abe has repeatedly called for changing Article 96 of the charter to allow parliament to pass amendments by a simple majority rather than the current two-thirds.

“This isn’t about what may or may not come of Article 96, but about constitutional reform, which is firmly written into the platform,” Takaichi told reporters.

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The prime minister advocates revising the constitution for the first time as part of plans to strengthen the military as Japan confronts a territorial conflict with China and threats from North Korea’s nuclear program. The U.S.-drafted document was imposed on Japan after World War II and the LDP has advocated changing it since the party was founded in 1955.

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Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-24/ldp-alters-abe-s-constitutional-pledge-in-japan-election-plans.html

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Warmongers.

[bananas]

1. Reuters Special Report - The deeper agenda behind "Abenomics"

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/05/24/japan-abe-idINDEE94N01P20130524?type=economicNews

Special Report - The deeper agenda behind "Abenomics"

By Linda Sieg, Yuko Yoshikawa and Tetsushi Kajimoto
TOKYO | Fri May 24, 2013 8:03am IST

(Reuters) - When ill health and political gridlock forced Shinzo Abe to quit after one dismal year as Japan's prime minister, his pride was dented and his self-confidence battered.

One thing, however, was intact: his commitment to a controversial conservative agenda centered on rewriting Japan's constitution. Conservatives see the 1947 pacifist charter, never once altered, as embodying a liberal social order imposed by the U.S. Occupation after Japan's defeat in World War Two.

"What worries me most now is that because of my resigning, the conservative ideals that the Abe administration raised will fade," Abe wrote in the magazine Bungei Shunju after abruptly quitting in September 2007. "From now on, I want to sacrifice myself as one lawmaker to make true conservatism take root in Japan."

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But interviews with some two dozen allies and insiders show "Abenomics" was a late addition to his platform.

Abe's unlikely comeback was engineered by a corps of politicians who called themselves the "True Conservatives," many of whom share his commitment to loosening constitutional constraints on the military and restoring traditional values such as group harmony and pride in Japanese culture and history.

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[Overseas]

2. K&R.