JCP criticizes government bill to revise public service law in order to promote ‘Amakudari’

   In the House of Representatives Plenary Session on May 15, Japanese Communist Party representative Yoshii Hidekatsu criticized a government bill to revise the National Public Service Law, stating that it will distort the system of public servants by having them serve for the business circles’ interests, not as “servants of the whole community” as prescribed by the Constitution.

   The bill will lift the ban on “Amakudari”, the bureaucratic practice of retired officials gaining executive positions in corporations, for two years after their retirement and establish a “public-private personnel exchange center” in the cabinet that will take over ministries’ activities of finding high corporate positions for them.

   Yoshii pointed out that the government plan is to completely abandon the principle of prohibiting such a practice, and that the center could become an institution to promote a fully unregulated form of “Amakudari”.

   Pointing out that the government is attempting to meet business circle’s demands by liberalizing the practice of “Amakudari”, Yoshii warned that the revision of the law will undermine public servants’ obligation to work in the interests of all citizens.

   “Instead, the government must drastically tighten the regulations on ‘Amakudari’ by extending the two-year ban to five years and prohibiting retired bureaucrats from being rehired by public service corporations and corporations with semi-governmental status, in addition to private corporations,” Yoshii stated.

   Yoshii also pointed out that the government bill failed to reestablish the constitutionally guaranteed basic rights of civil servants despite the fact that the International Labor Organization has repeatedly urged the Japanese government to do so.

   He said, “The government must undertake a democratic reform enabling public employees to work as servants for the public that includes the complete banning of ‘Amakudari’, the abolition of the system giving various privileges to carrier bureaucrats, and establishing civil servants’ basic labor rights.”

   Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, however, justified the abolition of the current regulations on “Amakudari” by saying that these regulations “prevent the public and private sectors from actively exchanging their personnel.”

    - Akahata, May 16, 2007