Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi heads to her office on Feb. 13. (Takeshi Iwashita)

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is still pushing for passage of the fiscal 2026 budget through the Diet before March 31, a drive that has already drawn criticism from opposition parties.

They noted that it was Takaichi’s dissolution of the Lower House at the start of the ordinary Diet session last month that made budget passage within this fiscal year more difficult.

On Feb. 13, Takaichi called to her office Hiroshi Kajiyama, the Liberal Democratic Party’s Diet Affairs Committee chair, Koichi Hagiuda, the LDP’s executive acting secretary-general, Masaji Matsuyama, the LDP’s Upper House caucus chair, and others.

According to those who attended the meeting, the party officials agreed that the budget should be passed as quickly as possible because it will affect the people’s lives.

The opposition had blasted Takaichi’s Lower House dissolution because the resulting Feb. 8 snap election would delay, for example, measures to help raise wages.

But after the LDP’s landslide win in the election, Takaichi’s associates approached ruling party officials about ways to pass the budget as soon as possible, including moving up the opening date of the special Diet session.

At the Feb. 13 meeting, one official suggested reducing the time given to ruling coalition lawmakers to ask questions during the Budget Committee sessions or to delay concentrated deliberations until after the budget is passed.

But deliberations in the Budget Committees of the two Diet chambers cover a wide range of topics in a question-and-answer approach involving Takaichi and her Cabinet ministers.

In the past, those sessions have been used by the opposition to pursue reports about scandals within the administration.

And if Takaichi seeks early budget passage, the opposition is sure to criticize her about trying to downplay the role of the Diet by reducing committee time.

One official in the Prime Minister’s Office said time allotted to the ruling coalition could be shortened since coalition lawmakers had talked about parts of the budget during their campaign speeches for the Lower House election.

At the same time, the budget will also have to be deliberated in the Upper House, where the ruling coalition does not control a majority and would need the cooperation of some opposition parties for passage.

One high-ranking LDP lawmaker said passing the budget in the current fiscal year was not realistic, adding that serious, and not hasty, discussions were needed in the Diet.

Opposition lawmakers also voiced their disapproval of Takaichi’s stance.

“If debate is shortened and a decision made based just on numbers, the question of what purpose the Diet holds will be raised,” Motohisa Furukawa, the Diet Affairs Committee chair for the Democratic Party for the People, told reporters on Feb. 13.

He said the ruling coalition should be more careful about how it handles the Diet just because it has become so gigantic in size.

“The Diet is the venue where the government and ruling coalition can fulfill its responsibility to explain to the people,” he said.

(This article was written by Yuta Ogi and Akira Takei.)

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