This year's ordinary session of parliament effectively ended on Saturday, before its official close on Sunday, after the Upper House skipped a vote on an opposition-sponsored bill to abolish the provisional gasoline tax rate.
On Saturday, the Upper House Committee on Financial Affairs met to discuss the bill, but the meeting ended without a vote. Opposition parties then submitted a motion to dismiss Shingo Miyake of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party as chairman of the committee.
However, the Rules and Administration Committee of the Upper House decided not to put the motion to a full Upper House vote.
Ahead of the Upper House election next month, the opposition camp demanded a full vote on the gasoline tax bill on Saturday, but the LDP-Komeito coalition rejected the demand. The ruling bloc holds a majority in the chamber.
Junichi Ishii, the LDP's parliamentary affairs chief in the Upper House, told Yoshitaka Saito, his counterpart from the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, at their meeting on the day that the bill does not deserve a vote.
On Friday, the bill passed the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, where the LDP-Komeito coalition lacks a majority.
During Saturday's Financial Affairs Committee meeting, Toshimitsu Funabashi of the LDP said that scrapping the gasoline tax surcharge on July 1, as the opposition-proposed bill calls for, is "too unrealistic a schedule."
Funabashi also voiced concerns that such a move could cause confusion among gas station operators and other related businesses.
Meanwhile, CDP policy chief Kazuhiko Shigetoku emphasized the need for "emergency measures to tackle the rising cost of living," noting, "We stand on the side of consumers."
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