Now that they find themselves in the opposition camp, Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers will have to undertake policymaking with far greater vigor than in the days when the party was in power, the newly appointed LDP Policy Research Council chairman said.
In a recent interview, Shigeru Ishiba explained that when the LDP was the ruling party, emphasis was placed on deliberating policies drafted by the government and balancing conflicting interests, rather than on actually devising policies from scratch.
"Lawmakers will now be asked to draft their own policies based on personal knowledge or the expertise of various information sources, think tanks and scholars," Ishiba said.