Amendment for Electoral District

Liberal Democratic Party’s Headquarters for Promoting Constitutional Amendment approved on Friday a draft of changing Articles 47 and 92 of Constitution of Japan, which would enable each prefecture to elect at least one lawmaker in House of Councillors. Having more supporters in local area of Japan than other parties, LDP had been frustrated with existence of electoral districts that unified two prefectures into one. Although that reform can be achieved through revision of related laws, LDP demands constitutional amendment to accumulate the accomplished facts of eroding the Constitution.

 

Supreme Court has been issuing the decisions that realized the gap of value of one vote in national elections were too large to be constitutional, recommending the legislative branch to consider unified districts in the election of House of Councillors. LDP lawmakers were firmly opposed that idea, asserting the necessity for the House to represent every prefecture with no persuasive reason.

 

Article 47 of the Constitution determines that electoral districts shall be fixed by law. LDP draft adds the article some sentences that setting electoral districts has to be made with general consideration of borders of local governments, local integrity or geographic elements, based on population. “General” means arbitral decision of bureaucrats in Japan. The draft also determines that every greater local entity, which means prefecture, elects at least one Councillor in the election.

 

It is obvious that LDP hopes to introduce some elements other than population into election system. If the Constitution was changed in that way, Supreme Court cannot decide unconstitutionality of great gap of value of one vote, which guarantees equality under the law. It is explicit challenge of conservative lawmakers, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, against rule of law.

 

The draft also aims at changing Article 92. “Regulations concerning organization and operations of local public entities shall be fixed by law in accordance with the principle of local autonomy,” it says. LDP draft adds the article a sentence that can be read as defining “broad local public entity” as prefecture and “basic local public entity” as city, town or village. It makes no sense for the draft to define the kinds of local public entities. As a matter of fact, there already are two kinds of local public entities, prefectures and cities, that actually work as states and cities in United States. The biggest issue on autonomy in Japan is not about character of local entity, but about distribution of executive power from Tokyo to local governments.