Candidate Disturbing Others Arrested

The Metropolitan Police Department arrested three members of the Party of Tsubasa with a suspect of disturbing freedom of election. The three members including a candidate are suspected as having interrupted the campaign of other candidates in by-election in Tokyo 15th district of the House of Representatives in April. It is unusual that a candidate of an election is arrested with disturbance of campaign of others. 

The arrested members include the head of the party and the secretary general who ran for the election. Those three members are reported to have disturbed campaign speech of other candidates. It is witnessed that they approached to other candidates very closely and separated the candidates from the audience. They are also suspected as chanting words of denouncing using loud speaker or honking at other’s speech.

 

The police recognized that their activities made the audience hard to listen to the speech. Although the police warned them based on the Public Offices Election Act, but they did not stop that disturbing activities. Other campaigns were forced to reduce the opportunity of outdoor speeches or to undisclose the schedule of campaigning which might have caused losing chances to approach to the voters.

 

The suspects argued that they were exercising freedom of speech and abiding by the related laws. It is obvious that freedom of an individual is guaranteed as long as it does not damage freedom of others under the Constitution of Japan. The police found that the three members violated freedom of election of other candidates. The parties suffered from those activities claimed to the police that they had been bothered.

 

The suspects uploaded the live stream of their activities to YouTube. The video earned tens of thousands of views every time they uploaded. One of the suspects told that he would make that his business, because the stream earned a great amount of income for advertising. It is called “attention economy.” Their purpose is not supposed to appeal their opinion to the public, but to establish a business with attention to their excessive behavior.

 

The police deliberately consider how their activities violate the law. The point was whether audience of the suffered candidates could not listen to the speeches. The suspects employed loud speakers or honking from the car, which would significantly disturb speeches. The police realized their activities have gone beyond the line of tolerated campaign strategy in an election.

 

It is possible that the police considered the case in the Upper House election campaign of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Sapporo in 2019, in which two people in the audience who chanted protests against Abe, without using speaker or other devices, were displaced by the police. The police was criticized as damaging freedom of speech. Although the case of the Party of Tsubasa was about obstruction of others’ freedom or about business, it is necessary for lawmakers to draw a line between freedom of speech and a crime.

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