Japan passes pension bills among parties struggle

Japan's House of Councilors enacted Saturday a package of pension reform laws among a fierce tug-of-war between the ruling and opposition parties.

Before the bills were passed, the ruling parties have voted down four motions brought up by the opposition camp against the upper house speaker, health and labor minister and two chairmen of the health and labor committees in both houses.

When the committee of upper house was voting on the bills Thursday, a scuffle erupted as opposition party members rushed to the seat of chairman to prevent the voting from happening.

Under the enacted package, the ceiling for premiums in the pension scheme for corporate employees, equally shouldered by employers, would be fixed at 18.30 percent of annual income in fiscal 2017 after being raised by 0.354 percentage point every year beginning this October. The rate is now 13.58 percent, or close to 7 percent each for employers and employees.

The pension bills have caused a political turmoil in Japan as government officials, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and seven cabinet members, and more than 100 lawmakers were found to fail to pay premiums. The scandal edged out Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda and rendered a leadership reshuffle of the major opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

The voting should have concluded Friday but for a series of filibustering tactics of the opposition parties. At the House of Representatives, the DPJ members adopted a so-called ox walk tactic -- walking at a snail's pace during the noconfidence voting.

But all these tactics were nothing but demonstrations of frustration due to the majority of the ruling coalition in both houses. The DPJ and another opposition party were absent from the voting Saturday morning.

The vigorous battle came one month before the upper house election. The ambitious DPJ wants to take more seats after seeing a big leap in the lower house election last year. It strongly opposes the bills, calling for a through revamp of the pension system. Meanwhile, Koizumi has been pushing hard for his sweeping reform plan and intends to capitalize on the recent rosy economic development to secure a victory in the upcoming election.

Source: Xinhua