Akihiro Ota, head of Komeito, was all smiles when he came out of a two-hour, one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, not necessarily because of the good wine that was served but rather because the prime minister reportedly assured him that there would be no general elections anytime soon.
The central theme of the meeting was how to steer the final days of the Diet's extraordinary session. Fukuda had been pressing the Ota-led junior partner of the governing coalition to cooperate with the Liberal Democratic Party in further extending the Diet session so that a bill to enable the Maritime Self-Defense Force to resume supplying fuel to the United States and other countries' naval ships in the Indian Ocean would clear the legislature. A second vote of approval — by a two-thirds majority — was needed in the Lower House for the bill to be enacted.
Some of the Komeito lawmakers were afraid, however, that if the bill was rammed through the Diet with the rarely used tactic of a second vote, the Democratic Party of Japan might submit a censure motion against Fukuda in the Upper House, where the DPJ and other opposition groups hold a majority, forcing the prime minister to dissolve the Lower House and call general elections.