Local Autonomy Revised

The revised Local Autonomy Act, which gives the national government a power to instruct a local government in emergency, passed the Diet with approve of the leading parties on June 19. While the opposition parties protested the law, arguing that it would change the relationship between the national government and the local government, Fumio Kishida administration dismissed those questions without presenting any example of what kind of case the instruction would become necessary.

The Local Government System Research Council, one of the advisory bodies for Prime Minister, recommendedexpanding instructing power of the national government last December. The council concluded that the difficulty of communication between the national government and the local governments when COVID-19 was prevalent had been caused by insufficiency of legal system, and suggested necessity for new law to give the national government a power of instruction.

 

Article 252, Section 26-8-4 of the revised Local Autonomy Act provides that each Minister can instruct prefectural governors or mayors to support the local government in a situation which crucially affect safety of the people. The local governments need to obey the instruction. The Basic Act on Disaster Management or Act on the Prevention of Infectious Diseases have a clause on instruction of the national government. The revised law enable the national government issuing instruction whenever it recognize a state of emergency, not only in case of natural disaster or pandemic.

 

The opposition parties argued that the provision may pave the way for the national government to exercise coercive power on the local governments with discretionary reasons. Masahito Ozawa with the Constitutional Democratic Party argued in the discussion of the House of Councillors that the new law did not clarify the condition for exercising instruction power, and no provision was included for consultation between the national government and the local governments in advance or involvement of the Diet.

 

“The law will fundamentally destroy local autonomy by subordinating the local governments to the national government,” said Gaku Ito with Japan Communist Party. Under the Constitution of Imperial Japan, the local governments were firmly subordinated to the national government. Prefectural governors were appointed by the national government. Because new post-war constitution stipulated self-determination of the local governments as a basic principle of local autonomy, the parity between the national government and the local governments has been supposed to be maintained.

 

The new law may undermine that parity forever. It is likely that the officers of national government were frustrated with the slow progress of measures dealing with COVID-19. But it was not because the local governments defied the policy of the national government, but beause the national government did not know well about what was going on in the streets. For example in the time of COVID, confusion over a national guidance for the people with 37.5°C of body temperature to go to hospital was brought because it was baseless. The national government seems to attribute those kinds of confusion to the local governments.