Roundup: Japan's contentious war bills clear upper house panel amid chaos, ongoing street protests

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition Thursday under the stewardship of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe passed publicly-opposed and highly controversial security bills at an upper house panel session amid chaotic scenes as opposition party lawmakers continue moves to block the bills being enacted into law.

Yoshitada Konoike, the LDP member who chairs the special committee, failed for more than 15-hours to bring the panel session to order so final discussions could begin on the security legislation that threatens to derail 70-years of post-war pacifism in Japan by thwarting key constitutional charters that prohibit the nation from maintaining a combative military or using force as a means to settle international disputes.

Opposition party members, opposed to Abe's plans to enact the legislation so as to expand the Self-Defense Forces' (SDF) combative parameters and allow the SDF to exercise the right to collective self-defense and come to the aid of an ally, even if Japan itself is not under attack, barricaded themselves in corridors overnight to prevent the LDP-led coalition from attempting to negotiate with the Democratic Party of Japan-led ( DPJ) opposition camp to make for a smoother vote in parliament's upper caucus.

The rowdy scenes escalated earlier Thursday when opposition party lawmakers surrounded and mobbed Konoike, with the chairman at one stage being seen to be escorted away by police from the chamber and the lawmakers, who remain intent on blocking or delaying the publicly-repealed bills from being put to a vote and enacted into law before the end of this week.

But as a majority of ruling-bloc lawmakers support the controversial bills, despite the vast majority of lawyers, constitutional experts and respected scholars in the nation unequivocally stating that the war bills are in contravention of the nation's Constitution and Supreme Law, the bills will likely be enacted this week and possibly later Thursday, during an upper house plenary session.

To this end, the chairman of the LDP's Diet Affairs Committee, Tsutomu Sato, told a press gathering after the passage of the bills that the ruling camp has no intention of invoking the 60-day provision, a rule that would mean if the bills are not voted on within 60-days the LDP can use its two-thirds majority in the more powerful lower house of parliament to enact the bills.

The ruling camp is eager the bills passed by Friday, ahead of a five-day "Silver Week" of holidays here as the government does not want mounting public protests to continue through the holidays, sources close to the matter said. But following a demonstration of around 35,000 public protestors who rallied late into the night Wednesday, thousands again descended on the National Diet building Thursday, despite heavy rain, to voice their continued opposition to the bills.

The vast majority of the public, according to the latest national polls, are against the legislation on account of its unconstitutionality and the potential that the expanded scope it will allow the SDF to operate overseas, including in U.S.-led combative campaigns, could see Japan, a pacifist nation since the end of WWII, dragged into war for the first time in 70 years.

On Thursday, as with previous demonstrations at the National Diet building, the frequency of which has been increasing of late, protestors comprising individual citizens and civic groups including an increasingly active student-based body, have been calling for the Constitution to be upheld along with Japan's long- standing pacifist ideology, the bills to be scrapped in their entirety and for Abe, whose unilateral reinterpretation of key clauses in the Constitution paved the way for him to ram the bills through the lower house in July, to step down.

The chaotic scenes seen in the upper house since the early hours on Thursday and the ongoing street protests are a testament to how passionately the opposition camp and the public feel about the war legislation not being enacted. The leaders of five opposition parties said Thursday they will use any and all measures to block the bills' passage.

DPJ heavyweight, Yukio Edano, secretary general of the DPJ, has said that there is absolutely no doubt that history will prove that it is a monumental error for Abe and the ruling bloc to enact bills by force or by exploiting their voting powers in both chambers of parliament that run contrary to the nation's Constitution and that parties including the DPJ that stood opposed to the bills would do everything in their power to continue to block the bills.

Such moves, which have raised tensions Thursday in the upper chamber and rattled the nerves of the ruling coalition who thought the enactment of the bills would be relatively smooth due to their majority voting power in both chambers of parliament, will likely include the DPJ attempting to delay the bills' enactment for as long as possible by submitting to parliament's lower chamber a no- confidence motion against Abe's Cabinet and a censure motion against Abe himself in the upper house. Endi