Parties Discuss Election System

The Council on Election System in the House of Representatives held a meeting with participation of representatives of each party on April 16th. It was the first meeting since the general election in February, in which the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) achieved a sweeping victory. Pushed by its coalition partner Japan Innovation Party (JIP), the LDP proposed adding reduction of seats in the House to the council’s agenda. The opposition parties are not willing to discuss it, because they do not know why they needed to discuss it right now. 

The council is one of the regular discussion bodies in the House, established every time when the members are refreshed in an election. In the outlines for the discussion when the council was established on April 9th, the council determined that the parties would discuss how to draw the line of electoral districts to assure parity in value of one vote.

 

Chairman of the council from LDP, Keisuke Suzuki, proposed in the April 16th meeting that reduction of seats should be added to the agenda of the council. The LDP and JIP agreed on reducing the seat of Lower House by 10 percent in their agreement for forming a leading coalition last October.

 

The JIP puts the highest priority on this issue. The leader of JIP is governor or Osaka, Hirofumi Yoshimura. Yoshimura has an experience that JIP achieved broad support for its policy to reduce members of Osaka Prefectural Assembly. He firmly believes that reduction of Diet seats will lead to a higher popularity of his party. That is why Yoshimura set this issue at the top.

 

However, a local assembly is one thing and the Diet is another. The House of Representatives has an unwritten rule that change of election system requires as widest consensus as possible between leading and opposition parties. It is not easy for the leading parties, even though they have a super majority, to unilaterally implement their idea against the oppositions.

 

The proposal for adding agenda of reducing seats faced protest from the opposition parties. “We will oppose any forcible procedure to reduce seats of the House,” said deputy secretary general of Centrist Reform Alliance, Hiromasa Nakano. Democratic Party for the People, Japan Communist Party and Sanseito also expressed their opposition to the idea of leading parties.

 

The LDP and JIP submitted a bill to last fall session to reduce 25 seats in single-seat districts and 20 in proportional district. But the bill did not pass. Hasted JIP recently proposed LDP to reduce 45 seats in proportional district. However, small parties obtain most of their seats in proportional district. Reduction of seats in proportional district works unbeneficial for those small parties. Nevertheless, JIP believes that super majority can overcome those protests.

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