From BBC:'Japan's main opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa has offered to resign from his position as head of the Democratic Party of Japan'.
This is wholly disappointing. If Ozawa really thinks of the current legislative deadlock as a serious problem, he is supposed to find the way out of it in another general election by which he should ask people's will for the future of Japanese politics. Considering the current vigour which the Democratic party has had since the landslide in the last general election for the House of Councilors in this summer, this may be even more true .
Democracy must include the respect for the plurality of ideas, and the plurality requires the clear sense of opposing ideas. Sound consent must come from arguments among opposing ideas. Now the 'Coalition' means nothing but blurring such sense of plurarity and opposition. Therefore, both the facts that Ozawa accepted the PM Fukuda's coalition offer so rashly, and that he used it as an explanation of resignation that he was turned down the idea of coalition by his colleagues, tell us how undeveloped Japanese democracy still is.
This is wholly disappointing. If Ozawa really thinks of the current legislative deadlock as a serious problem, he is supposed to find the way out of it in another general election by which he should ask people's will for the future of Japanese politics. Considering the current vigour which the Democratic party has had since the landslide in the last general election for the House of Councilors in this summer, this may be even more true .
Democracy must include the respect for the plurality of ideas, and the plurality requires the clear sense of opposing ideas. Sound consent must come from arguments among opposing ideas. Now the 'Coalition' means nothing but blurring such sense of plurarity and opposition. Therefore, both the facts that Ozawa accepted the PM Fukuda's coalition offer so rashly, and that he used it as an explanation of resignation that he was turned down the idea of coalition by his colleagues, tell us how undeveloped Japanese democracy still is.
