After 11 days of turmoil under an opposition boycott, the Diet is ready to return to normal today after the ruling triumvirate and the Democratic Party of Japan on Tuesday agreed on an arbitrated proposal from the Lower House speaker. Executives of the six main parties met with Speaker Soichiro Ito in the morning to study his mediation offer, which was accepted by the tripartite governing coalition as well as the DPJ, the largest opposition force. Ito's proposal urged the Lower House Steering Committee to consider ways to hold extra proceedings in plenary sessions to make up for the opposition camp's missing the prime minister's policy speech and its opportunity to raise questions. Following the proposal, the committee decided to give the leaders of the three major opposition parties an extra opportunity to question Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi during today's Lower House plenary session. The speaker's arbitration also urged opposition lawmakers to join deliberations of the newly established constitutional research panel and to participate in the one-on-one debate sessions between Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and opposition leaders, another new feature in the current Diet session. The proposal was intended to meet the opposition members' demands that they get another chance to hear Obuchi's speech and debate it. At the same time, it took note of the ruling bloc's objections to opposition demands for another Obuchi speech. Under the arbitration, Ito urged all parties to make efforts to reach an agreement on issues concerning the electoral system. The DPJ, JCP and SDP have been boycotting Diet sessions since late last month to protest the ruling bloc's handling of the bill to cut Lower House seats. The law, which cuts 20 of the 200 proportional representation seats in the 500-member Lower House, was enacted last Wednesday after the Upper House passed it in the absence of opposition members. Meanwhile, the two other opposition forces -- the Japanese Communist Party and Social Democratic Party -- rejected Ito's proposal, claiming that it failed to touch on the ruling camp's responsibility for having caused the turmoil in the Diet. Both the JCP and SDP, however, said that they will participate in Diet deliberations following the DPJ's announcement to return to the legislature. "We have thoroughly sent messages outside the Diet, through 'alternative Diet sessions' and on the streets," DPJ Secretary General Tsutomu Hata said. "But we decided things wouldn't improve if we just continue boycotting unilaterally." The DPJ, which had earlier demanded an apology from the ruling bloc as well as an early dissolution of the Lower House as preconditions to ending the boycott, apparently backed down when confronted with the ruling side's unchanged bullish tone. "I have to apologize to the public for the delay in the Diet deliberations. But I'd like (the public) to remember where the cause lay," DPJ President Yukio Hatoyama said, adding that the DPJ will continue calling for early dissolution of the Diet through deliberations. "We have been determined to carry on (Diet business as usual even in the absence of the opposition camp)," LDP Secretary General Yoshiro Mori told reporters. "It's nice to have the opposition back at the Diet."
