4 more lawmakers in upper house favor constitutional revision
(Mainichi Japan)
As the ruling coalition aims to secure at least two-thirds of all seats in the House of Councillors along with some opposition parties to meet a prerequisite for initiating constitutional amendment, they may get extra help from some legislators whose seats are uncontested in the July 10 House of Councillors election, it has been learned.
Independent lawmakers Shigefumi Matsuzawa and Yoshiyuki Inoue, as well as Antonio Inoki of the Assembly to Energize Japan, said they are in favor of revising Japan's pacifist Constitution, according to a Mainichi Shimbun survey covering upper house members whose seats are not up for grabs in the coming election. Michitaro Watanabe, another independent upper house member, declined to respond to the survey, but he had told an April press conference that he empathized with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s policy to amend the supreme law.
If these four lawmakers are added to the pro-amendment camp in the upper chamber, the LDP and its coalition partner Komeito will only need to capture a total of 74 of the seats up for grabs in the July 10 election along with the opposition Initiatives from Osaka and the Party for Japanese Kokoro -- which also support constitutional revision -- in order to secure the two-thirds majority of 162 seats in the 242-seat chamber.
