Aprivate sector group known as Niju-isseiki Rincho (21st Century Ad-Hoc Study Group) has handed Democratic Party of Japan secretary general Ichiro Ozawa a set of proposals to enhance the performance of the Diet. Mr. Ozawa also has his own ideas and prepared a bill.

In order to enliven Diet discussions, Mr. Ozawa calls for banning bureaucrats from answering questions from Diet members. He thinks that only Cabinet members should do so.

The Rincho group proposes a different approach. It calls for dividing the functions of Diet committees into two — one for discussions by politicians on bills and the other for investigation by politicians of the work of government ministries by calling bureaucrats to the Diet. This is a reasonable proposal that deserves serious attention.

There should be cases in which exclusion of bureaucrats hampers the proper function of the Diet. If lawmakers want to know and question detailed data and past decisions of the government, the presence of bureaucrats is indispensable.

Mr. Ozawa thinks that the chief of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau should not speak in the Diet. Although the bureau is part of the bureaucracy, it has played an important role in setting the government's official interpretations of the Constitution, especially the war-renouncing Article 9. Letting the prime minister and Cabinet ministers monopolize answers related to constitutional interpretations carries a danger of arbitrarily changing long-standing interpretations.

Thinking that the ruling parties and the administration are one and the same, Mr. Ozawa did not let DPJ members question Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in a Lower House plenary session about his policy speech. Along this line, he thinks that ruling party lawmakers should not submit written questions to the Cabinet nor write bills on their own. But as the Rincho group says, ruling party politicians should be encouraged to question the Cabinet and to write their own bills in the Diet.

Taking advantage of the recent change of government, all lawmakers should push discussions on Diet reform.