Kishida Cabinet, lower house speaker face no-confidence motion
Kenta Izumi, who heads the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, told reporters ahead of the submission that his party cannot overlook the Kishida government's failure to protect people's lives from the impact of rising prices.
Tsuyoshi Takagi, Diet affairs chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said the ruling coalition of the LDP and Komeito party will vote down the motion against the Cabinet «without making a fuss» as there is «no clear reason of no confidence.»
Takagi said Kishida has the option of dissolving the lower house in response to the motion.
He also said they will vote down the other motion for Hiroyuki Hosoda. The lower house speaker was recently reported by a weekly magazine to have sexually harassed women including a reporter and an LDP employee.
Izumi criticized Kishida's Cabinet for only taking measures against rising gasoline prices, which centered on subsidizing wholesalers, in the fiscal 2022 supplementary budget, saying, «It will neither protect people's lives nor revive the Japanese economy.»
Izumi also criticized the government and the Bank of Japan for lacking understanding of how people's living has been affected by rising prices after the central bank chief Haruhiko Kuroda recently drew fire for saying consumers have become more «tolerant» of price hikes.
Kuroda retracted his comments on Wednesday after offering a rare apology the day before, saying he did not mean consumers are voluntarily accepting the price increases.
The CDPJ has called on other opposition parties to support the motions, and the Japanese Communist Party said it plans to vote for the motions.
