Japan Press Weekly

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2013 September 25 - October 1 [ELECTION]

All JCP candidates win Ichinoseki City Assembly election

All of the five Japanese Communist Party candidates won seats in Iwate’s Ichinoseki City Assembly election on September 29, maintaining their pre-election strength while the total number of assembly seats decreased. The percentage of seats in the assembly held by JCP representatives climbed to 16.67%.

A total of 34 candidates fought over the 30 seats which had been reduced by seven. While the turnout rate dropped by 5.21 percentage points, the JCP obtained 689 more votes than that in the previous city assembly election. As a result, the percentage of JCP’s votes against the total increased by 1.34 percentage points.

In the election campaign, the JCP candidates pledged to reduce National Health Insurance (NHI) tax premiums which are too expensive for many people to pay.

The Ichinoseki City government has been taking a firm and cold-hearted stance toward residents who have difficulties in paying the NHI premiums.

A municipal government is allowed to take away NHI certificates from those who are in arrears with the premium payments and instead issue them three-month certificates or temporary certificates. Holders of temporary certificates are required to pay the full amount of the cost for medical treatment at hospitals. A local government can also seize the property of those who are delinquent with their premiums.

Ichinoseki City has revoked NHI cards from more households in arrears than any other municipality in the prefecture and forcibly collected the largest amount of the NHI tax by seizing their properties. Tax collection by the city is so harsh that a resident reportedly committed suicide as an act of final resort.

In addition, the city in last March submitted to the city assembly a bill to raise NHI premiums by around 6,000 yen a person a year, or a total of 190 million yen. The bill was passed by the assembly, though the JCP assembly members voted against it.

The JCP during the election campaign argued that the city government should retract the tax hike plan, and the tax premium can be reduced by 20,000 yen per household if the city decided to use budget from a general account for that purpose as many other municipalities in the prefecture do. This proposal attracted much support from a wide range of voters.

Since the Great East Japan Disaster hit the prefecture two years ago, public trust for the JCP has been growing. Local JCP members have been working hard in various disaster recovery activities, such as sending volunteer staff and helping farmers with getting compensation for damages caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident.