November 22, 2009

The Japan Lawyers Association for Freedom (JLAF) on November 21 confirmed that it will oppose a plan of the Democratic Party of Japan to cut the number of proportional representation seats in the House of Representatives within four years because it constitutes “human rights violations.”

In a symposium held on the same day to discuss the present single-seat constituency system, the JLAF argued that the proportional representation system accurately reflects public opinion and that the plan to reduce the number of proportional representation seats “will violate human rights” because it will lead to the strengthening of the small-constituency system that eliminates minority opinions and a full spectrum of diversity of the popular will from national politics.

Many lawyers at the symposium pointed out that the real aim of the plan to cut the number of proportional representation seats is to completely exclude the voices of any political party other than the two major ones (the DPJ and the previous ruler Liberal Democratic Party) and “to prevent the voices of the people such as opposition to constitutional revisions and an increase in the consumption tax from being heard in the Diet.”

Kikuchi Hiroshi, head of the JLAF, called on all the members of the bar working for democracy to “act in opposition to the seat-cutting scheme of the DPJ as it challenges to the very foundation of democracy.”
- Akahata, November 22, 2009