Former Japanese Prime Minister heads up working team on Jubilee 2000

Tsusoma Hata, former Prime Minister of Japan, has agreed to head up a Democratic parliamentary team on Jubilee 2000. The decision follows intensive lobbying by the Japanese Jubilee 2000 campaign that was only launched in late 1998. The Democratic Party (which is the key opposition party) is calling a meeting of all the Democratic Party MPs to discuss Jubilee 2000 on 22 January. They will then take the report to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and the likely sherpa for the Cologne Summit, Mr Sakakibara, Vice Minister of Finance.

The Jubilee 2000 campaign has recruited MPs from all the key opposition parties to join the campaign. Key people include Ms Takaka Doi (President of the Social Democratic Party and former Speaker of the House of Representatives - who has considerable influence) and Ms Akiko Domoto (President of GLOBE - an environmental alliance set up after Rio Summit).

They are calling on the MPs to raise the issue of Jubilee 2000 in committees and plenary session and to push for Japan to play a positive role at the G8 Summit in June 1998 in Cologne. If there is a decision in principle to cancel debts at the G8 Summit, they are calling for the establishment between July 99 and March 2000 of a “Jubilee budget” of Y 700 billion (£3.6 billion) to cancel the debts.

The important political background to this parliamentary support is that the Liberal Democratic Party split. Hata was Prime Minister of the Liberal Democratic Government but now heads the largest opposition party (the Democratic Party). The Liberal Democratic Party has dominated the political scene for generations but its grip on political power is slipping following the recession. Although they still have an overall majority in the House of Representatives, they no longer have an overall majority in the secondary House of Councillors.

Yoko Kitazawa, Co-ordinator of Jubilee 2000 in Japan, remained hopeful that the Liberal Democratic Government will take a positive stand on debt. Keizo Obuchi, the Prime Minister, was formerly Foreign Secretary for the Liberal Democratic Party. He is generally seen as sympathetic to NGOs and demonstrated his resolve when he signed the Landmines Ban against strong opposition from his own Defence Secretary.

The progress in parliament has been matched by a growing popular campaign. A large number of organisations from consumer groups to trade unions are joining the campaign. Recently, Rissho Kosei Kai (a Japanese Buddhist Order) agreed to join the Coalition. Representing 4 million members, they are an influential organisation and have the potential to take the message of debt cancellation to a wide audience.

The parliamentary support in Japan adds to the growing tide of support for Jubilee 2000 in parliaments across the world. In the UK, an all-party group on Jubilee 2000 with over 100 MPs has been pushing the Government for urgent action on debt. In Germany, the Green Party who are coalition partners in the German Government have backed the campaign. In Mozambique, parliamentarians from all parties in a recent seminar on debt strongly rejected the current HIPC debt initiative and called for “total and unconditional cancellation” of Mozambique's debt. And in Guyana, the president recently passed the Jubilee 2000 petition around the cabinet table, gaining the signatures of all key ministers for campaign.

In April, 1998, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) passed a resolution in support of Jubilee 2000. The IPU is a world organisation of over 100 parliaments which fosters addresses questions of international significance and fosters links between parliaments around the world. At the 99^th Inter-Parliamentary Conference, in Windhoek, the IPU adopted a resolution which highlighted “foreign debt as a factor limiting the integration of the third world countries into the process of globalisation.”

The resolution stated that it “supports the cancellation or a substantial reduction of the debt as part of the jubilee celebration of the year 2000, so that peoples can enter the new millennium in better conditions.” In support of its call, the resolution emphasises many of the principles and arguments for the worldwide Jubilee 2000 movement. It highlights the damaging impact of debt servicing on education, health and environmental programmes which “posed a threat to political stability and democratic development”. It also expressed its concern for the conditionalities imposed by international financial institutions which have “had an especially harsh impact on children, women, indigenous peoples and minority populations.” Amongst its recommendations, it calls on the UN to get an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice at the Hague “on the manner in which part of the debt was contracted.” It concludes by calling for policies that take into account the “co-responsibility between creditor and debtor countries” to end the debt crisis and the involvement of civil society in building a “sustainable, socially just and environmentally sound development.”