The following is the gist of an Akahata reporter’s analysis (Aug. 27) of the recent Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro’s move to instruct the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to draft a constitutional revision.
When he directed the LDP secretary general to finish drafting amendments to the Constitution by November 2005, Prime Minister Koizumi assured that this will not be on the Cabinet’s agenda. Apparently, he tries to assign the Cabinet and the ruling party different roles for one purpose.
Notably, this is the first time for a prime minister to set a deadline for the LDP effort to come up with a draft revision of the Constitution. Koizumi, who has often expressed his contempt for the Constitution, is now setting out to destroy the present Constitution. His remarks could have serious consequences for Japan’s future.
Continued at Japan Press Service
Missile defense program brings arms race for preemptive attack strategy
The Defense Agency will request 140 billion yen as expenses for the country’s missile defense in FY 2004 budget.
The amount is about ten times as much as the sum budgeted for “the Japan-U.S. technical research on missile defense” since FY 1999. The amount, however, is only a fraction of the cast of taking part in the U.S. missile defense system, reportedly somewhere between 1.2 trillion and 5.9 trillion yen.
The agency seeks to field standard missiles (SM3) and surface-to-air guided patriot missiles (PAC3) in 2007, following the deployment of a missile defense shield in the United States from next year.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.