Two senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers who left the chamber before a lower house vote on a consumption tax cut bill say they will resign as deputy chairs of the party's tax research commission, exposing a split over the tax cut itself.
Yuko Obuchi, a former election strategy chief, told reporters at party headquarters on the 10th that she would step down. She said tax panel chairman Itsunori Onodera had asked for her resignation and she accepted.
Yoshihisa Furukawa, a former justice minister, told Onodera the same day that he also intended to resign the post. Both had abstained from the lower house vote on the 6th.
Obuchi met Secretary-General Toshimitsu Suzuki and Deputy Secretary-General Koichi Hagiuda at party headquarters on the morning of the 10th. They pressed her to resign, and she refused.
“I cannot resign as deputy chair on my own. If I am not needed as deputy chair, I want the tax panel chairman, who made the appointment, to fire me.”Yuko Obuchi, LDP lawmaker
Onodera then asked her to step down, saying it was inappropriate for someone who left the chamber on a bill subject to a party whip to remain a deputy chair, she said.
The vote on the consumption tax cut bill on the 6th was abstained by Obuchi and Furukawa, as well as former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Economic Planning Agency chief Hajime Funada. The LDP reprimanded all four on the 9th.
Obuchi said she had not been asked to leave her other post as head of the party's labor affairs bureau, and that she intends to stay on.
The reprimand is the second-lightest penalty the party can impose, and Ishiba is the first former party president to receive one.