Ex-PM Noda to Deliver Memorial Speech for Abe at Diet

Tokyo, Oct. 7 (Jiji Press)--Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, a lawmaker of the leading opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, is set to deliver a memorial speech for slain former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Diet, the country's parliament.

Noda is expected to give the speech at a plenary meeting of the House of Representatives, the lower chamberof the Diet, late this month.

Tsuyoshi Takagi, Diet affairs chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, proposed to his CDP counterpart, Jun Azumi, Friday that Noda deliver the speech. The CDP accepted the offer.

Takagi told Azumi that bereaved relatives of Abe, including his wife, Akie, and the LDP, want Noda to take on the task. "The deceased had served as prime minister for a long time, and it would be former Prime Minister Noda, immediate predecessor (of Abe in his second tenure as prime minister), who could understand best the pressure and loneliness of being in the top government post," he added.

Noda was prime minister between September 2011 and December 2012 in the government led by the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan. Abe, who was a member of the LDP, served in the post from December 2012 to September 2020 in the second tenure. Abe was shot to death in July this year.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]