Education Minister Faces No-Confidence Motion

Jiji Press

16:42 JST, February 19, 2024

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan submitted a no-confidence motion against education minister Masahito Moriyama on Monday.

The CDP claimed that Moriyama made unacceptable parliamentary remarks over his relations with an organization linked to the controversial religious group Unification Church in connection with the October 2021 election for the House of Representatives.

The motion was submitted to the lower house and is expected to be put to a vote at a plenary meeting Tuesday afternoon.

Prior to this, the CDP held an extraordinary meeting of its senior members and decided to submit the motion alone.

“Unfortunately, we have no choice but to recognize that he had ties with the Unification Church. It’s serious that he had been hiding” the relationship, Jun Azumi, the CDP’s Diet affairs chief, told reporters.

“We judged that he lacks the qualification as a person in charge of education administration in our country,” Azumi said.