Although the current Diet session is to end June 22, there are no prospects that important bills will be enacted soon. One reason for this is Liberal Democratic Party President Sadakazu Tanigaki's distrust of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, sounded him out about the possibility of forming a coalition between the Democratic Party of Japan and the LDP by telephoning him without doing the groundwork first.
Another reason is that Mr. Kan acts as if he was not really concerned about the reconstruction of the disaster-hit areas.
The Kan administration plans to submit a second supplementary budget for fiscal 2011 — to fund full-scale reconstruction — to an extraordinary Diet session expected to start in August or later. This is used as an excuse by the LDP for not cooperating with the DPJ. Mr. Tanigaki on Tuesday threatened to submit a no-confidence motion against Mr. Kan if his administration fails to submit the extra budget to the current Diet session.