Japan Press Weekly

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2016 June 8 - 14 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Abe intends to reuse misleading tactics to win July election

With the July House of Councilors election approaching, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has begun to claim that the main issue in the election agenda is his economic policies. However, this is Abe’s tactics used to distract voters’ attention from his aspiration to achieve a constitutional revision.

In the past three years, each time after Abe won national elections by promoting his “Abenomics” economic policies, he forcibly implemented policies leading to creating a pro-war Japan that he had never mentioned in the election campaigns.

In the case of the July 2013 House of Councilors election, the first national election after Abe took office, the Prime Minister prominently put up an “Abenomics” ad balloon and the ruling bloc secured a majority of seats in the House. Five months later, the Abe government enacted the state secrets protection law despite fierce opposition from journalists and citizens that the law will severely damage people’s right to know. In addition, the Abe Cabinet in July 2014 made a decision to lift the ban on Japan’s use of the collective self-defense right in complete disregard of the conventional constitutional interpretation. These are components of Abe’s move to turn Japan into a war-fighting country.

In the December 2014 House of Representatives election campaign, Abe insisted that the focal point was about whether Abenomics should be continued. The ruling Liberal Democratic and Komei parties won a two-thirds majority in the Lower House largely thanks to the winner-take-all single-seat constituency system. Then, the Abe government in September 2015 forced the unconstitutional war laws through the parliament while citizens were staging massive protest actions outside the Diet building.

Abe intends to do the same yet again in next month’s Upper House election. Until recently, Abe promoted his ambition to revise the Constitution while still in office and said that he will work to win two-thirds of the House seats which is needed to initiate constitutional amendments. However, as most voters are not supporting any constitutional change, Abe is now trying to mislead the general public into paying attention to his economic policies.

Once Abe won the election with this use of misleading tactics, he will propose an adverse revision to the Constitution, his long-held ambition.

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on June 5 at a street speech gathering in Sapporo stressed that the upcoming election is the first election after the forcible enactment of the unconstitutional war laws. Shii called on the audience to work to bring down the Abe government which is arrogantly trampling on the Constitution.


Past related articles:
> Block Abe’s attempt at actual revision of the pacifist Constitution [January 14, 2016]
> Abe plans to initiate constitutional revision after 2016 Upper House election [February 6, 2015]