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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday he planned to set up two separate bodies within the government to ensure a clearer understanding of the designation of state secrets, amid increasing public and political resistance to a secrecy bill the ruling Liberal Democratic Party-led bloc wants enacted Friday.
Abe told a parliamentary committee that he is seeking to provisionally create an advisory body within the government comprised of legal and media experts to determine the parameters of what can be called a "special secret," how they will be handled and issued relating to their declassification.
The second entity will be set up within the Cabinet Secretariat, where senior ministers will verify the validity of the designation of special secrets by Abe, his Cabinet and other senior government officials, the premier told the committee.
"We are making preparations to ensure that the law will be enforced in an appropriate manner and the government will create a post to oversee the management and disposal of official documents that include special secrets," Abe said at the parliamentary meeting.
The LDP-led ruling coalition has confirmed its intention to have the controversial bill enacted into law by the upper house on Friday, the final day of the current Diet session, stating that all debatable issues have already been settled and the government' s fundamental stance made clear through lower house deliberations.
But the majority of opposition parties on Wednesday boycotted a public hearing on the bill, with party representatives believing the ruling bloc steamrolled the bill through the lower house, despite calls for further debate and a harsh public backlash that has cause Abe's support rate to drop, as more than fifty percent of citizens polled here in a national survey recently stated they were opposed to the bill.
Mounting public opposition to the bill was exhibited Wednesday by mass protests around the Diet building where Abe's committee convened, which saw civic groups and labor unions mobilize more than 6,000 people to demonstrate around the one-kilometer perimeter of the Diet building, hand-in-hand.
The protestors called for the bill to be dismissed, shouting, " The public's opinion must be heard," and that "the bill must be scrapped."
The new bill seeks to bolster the government's ability to penalize those found leaking what it deems to be state secrets, with a definition of what is considered a secret remaining abundantly vague.
Opposition parties and public concerns are still rife despite Abe' attempts Wednesday to dispel objections by stating he will create two entities to counter-balance the government's autonomy and ability to withhold information from the public at will.
With more than half of Japanese citizens polled recently stating that the law requires more debate, 22 percent insisted the bill be withdrawn entirely and more than 60 percent are perturbed at the forcible manner in which the ruling bloc dragooned the bill through the lower house of parliament.
The main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has declared that it will not support the bill as the law fails to specify what the government can and cannot disclose, meaning that it has unrestricted authority to suppress information and not disclose it to the public, which is not in line with Japan's democratic ideals.
Despite Abe's announcement of an inter-governmental council and committee to oversee the legitimacy of state secret designations and their handling, opposition parties are still concerned alongside the public, of which 26 percent stated they are "greatly concerned by the matter," while 52 percent said they were " concerned to some extent."
As opposition to the bill heats up, political insiders said Wednesday that the current Diet session may have to be extended as deliberations continue ahead of the scheduled upper house vote on Friday.
The opposition lawmakers argued that Abe's recent moves undermine the nation's democratic ideals and are reminiscent of Japan's wartime military secrecy initiatives, which allowed armed forces to act with impunity and beyond the scope of public scrutiny.
But the prime minister has stated that the bill is indispensable in establishing a legal framework for his newly- formed, U.S.-style National Security Council (NSC), which was launched Wednesday.
