Ten-seat Reduction

The president of a panel for reform of the election system of House of Representatives, Takeshi Sasaki, submitted a proposal on the issue to House Speaker, Tadamori Oshima, on Thursday. The proposal included reducing 10 seats out of all 475 to implement willingness to painful reform of the lawmakers. However, Some lawmakers, mainly affiliated with Liberal Democratic Party, looked frustrated with, representing corruptive aspect of Japanese politics.

The proposal required the House to reduce 6 electoral districts out of 295 and 4 seats from 180 proportional representatives. For electoral districts, it recommended to redraw the lines for increasing 7 in four prefectures and reducing 13 in thirteen prefectures. By this reform, the panel calculated that the value gap of one vote would be contained within two times, the benchmark the Supreme Court decided to keep the election system constitutional.

The Supreme Court has been sentencing that the elections of House of Representatives were in a situation of unconstitutional, because value gap of one vote was violating constitutional principle of equality under law. At the end of his administration in late 2012, then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Democratic Party of Japan persuaded opposite LDP led by Shinzo Abe and Komeito to promote the reform. As parties were incompetent in reaching an agreement for so long, the Speaker asked some experts to suggest a right way.

Lawmakers of LDP opposed the proposal that focused on local seats for the reduction. According to Asahi Shimbun, Toru Ishizaki, a representative of Niigata 1^st district, appealed that seats should be cut in proportional representatives, not local electoral districts, if the House would make the reduction. “We need to keep ourselves in a clinch,” quoted Mainichi a voice of LDP lawmaker. Although Abe and LDP party leaders suggested following the proposal, each lawmaker in jeopardy of the cut was ignoring it.

Other parties are mostly willing to obey. “The proposal has to be respected to some extent. It should more than worth resignation of Prime Minister, if Supreme Court decided an election as invalid,” said Yukio Edano, DPJ Secretary General. Komeito is also willing to follow the proposal.

The issue is about constitutional status of each Representative. It is necessary for the legislative branch to follow a decision by the judicial branch, if the lawmakers understand separation of three powers. Under the leadership of a Prime Minister who keeps on demanding new constitution, his colleagues look to feel no uneasiness in opposing current Constitution that govern themselves.