FY 2009 budget to clear lower house Fri., anti-Aso pressure may grow+

TOKYO, Feb. 26 Kyodo -
The fiscal 2009 state budget is set to clear the House of Representatives on
Friday, making it certain it will be enacted by the March 31 end of the current
fiscal year, but pressure to dump Prime Minister Taro Aso from within his own
Liberal Democratic Party is expected to pick up pace after the enactment.
Once the record 88.5 trillion yen budget to finance part of Aso's current
pump-priming measures clears the Diet, the main opposition Democratic Party of
Japan is also expected to step up pressure for Aso to hold a general election,
in which the DPJ has a good shot at wresting power from the long-dominant
ruling LDP, analysts said.
Budgets will be enacted 30 days under an article of the Constitution after
being sent to the House of Councillors, even if the upper house refuses to hold
a vote.
If there is not much to do in parliament after the budget and related bills
pass and until the Diet closes on June 3, ''it's obvious that opposition party
lawmakers as well as some from within Prime Minister Aso's (LDP) would pressure
him to call an election,'' said Tomoaki Iwai, a professor of politics at Nihon
University.
''Prime Minister Aso is unlikely to resist the pressure and may be forced to
hold an election around May,'' Iwai said.
Aso has refused to dissolve the lower house despite expectations he would do so
soon after he took office last September, saying that he needs to focus on
efforts to see recovery of the country's recession-hit economy and that he
won't hold an election until the budget and related bills clear the Diet.
Speculation has been growing that the Japanese leader, whose public support is
in tatters, aims to compile fresh economic steps, as by doing so, he can put
off the Diet dissolution from the widely anticipated May and hold on to power a
little longer, analysts said.
But Aso told reporters Thursday he has no plans at the moment to order the
ruling coalition of the LDP and the New Komeito party to compile an extra
budget for the fiscal year from April 1.
According to sources close to the prime minister, however, Aso is looking to
instruct in early March the ruling bloc to work on large-scale additional steps
worth more than 100 trillion yen, and officially announce them prior to the
Group of 20 financial summit in London on April 2.
Amid signs of a deepening economic recession, there has been talk about the
possibility of forming an additional stimulus for some time, with Finance
Minister Kaoru Yosano indicating he is positive toward formulating such a step.
The government said last week that Japan's real gross domestic product in the
October to December quarter last year shrank at an annualized 12.7 percent from
the previous quarter, the steepest contraction in about 35 years.
But opposition party lawmakers have blasted the move. Seiji Maehara, a former
DPJ president, said, ''It's not right for the Aso Cabinet to compile a
supplementary budget for fiscal 2009. What's right is to compile full-fledged,
fundamental economic measures after gaining popular mandate.''
Aso himself has also been cautious about referring to an extra budget while the
main budget is still being debated in parliament.
Earlier this month, he said, ''If we discuss compiling an extra budget at the
moment, it would be the same thing as saying the main budget is defective.''
Meanwhile, the LDP and DPJ agreed Thursday to hold a vote in the House of
Councillors on Wednesday on a bill needed to implement a cash handout plan
included in the second extra budget for fiscal 2008, following a vote by the
upper house's Committee on Financial Affairs on Tuesday.
The opposition-controlled upper house is likely to vote down the bill, but the
more powerful lower house will endorse it by a two-thirds majority through a
revote.
==Kyodo
2009-02-26 22:30:38