Opposition Blocs Express Frustration with Political Vacuum; They Urge LDP to Convene Diet Soon

By Maki Sanbuichi and Mari Kaneyama / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

14:51 JST, September 10, 2025

The Liberal Democratic Party’s decision to choose a successor to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba through a full-scale vote has provoked a backlash from opposition parties, as it will be almost a month before Ishiba’s successor is decided, creating a further political vacuum and leaving stalled policy discussions in limbo.

In a full-scale election, rank-and-file LDP members and supporters nationwide, as well as the party’s lawmakers, vote on the party’s next president. A simplified method for choosing a president also exists, in which one vote is cast by each lawmaker and three votes are cast by each prefectural chapter.

“It is deeply worrying that this political vacuum will go on for another month,” Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Junya Ogawa said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The leadership election is scheduled to be held on Oct. 4, with candidacy filings set for Sept. 22. Junichi Ishii, chairman of the LDP Diet Affairs Committee in the House of Councillors, told reporters Tuesday that an extraordinary Diet session would be convened “sometime between around mid-October to Oct. 20 at the earliest.”

In response, Diet affairs committee chairs from six opposition parties — the CDPJ, the Japan Innovation Party, the Democratic Party for the People, Sanseito, the Japanese Communist Party and the Conservative Party of Japan — held a meeting at which they agreed to demand that the government and ruling parties convene an early session of the Diet.

With the Ishiba Cabinet having lost its policy-making drive, CDPJ Diet Affairs Committee Chairman Hirofumi Ryu said, “It is unacceptable for this political vacuum to continue due to [the LDP’s] internal party affairs.” He added emphatically, “It would be fine for them to have the Diet operating while they are having their election.”

Lawmakers are feeling an increasing sense of urgency, as economic measures and a supplementary budget to back them up need to be formulated as soon as possible in response to a growing pile of unresolved issues, such as creating domestic strategies to cope with U.S. tariff policy and soaring rice prices.

Opposition parties are also frustrated by stalled policy discussions with the ruling parties.

Both ruling and opposition blocs agreed that the provisional gasoline tax would be abolished within this year, but opposition parties have now begun to demand that the change be implemented in November.

“We won’t be able to abolish it in November if we wait until the LDP’s new leadership is decided,” DPFP acting representative Motohisa Furukawa said at a party meeting Tuesday. “We want the Ishiba administration to get this done.”

Opposition parties on Wednesday submitted to House of Representatives Speaker Fukushiro Nukaga a request to convene an extraordinary Diet session, in accordance with Article 53 of the Constitution.

However, the Constitution does not specify a deadline for convening such a session, and JIP Diet affairs committee chairman Takashi Endo admitted, “We do not know how effective [the request] will be.”