Japan Press Weekly

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2017 December 13 - 19 [JCP]

JCP candidate wins Ageo City Assembly by-election handsdown

In the by-election of Saitama’s Ageo City Assembly held on December 17, Japanese Communist Party candidate Toguchi Saichi was elected with the most number of votes. The JCP increased its number of seats to six from its pre-election five seats, becoming the largest party in the assembly.

In the race in which six candidates competed for two seats, Toguchi garnered more than 16,000 votes, 1.9 times more than the ballots that the JCP obtained in the city under the proportional representation system in the October House of Representatives election.

During the election campaign, Toguchi appealed to voters that the JCP is a political party with clean hands that has never received political donations from companies and organizations. He pledged that the JCP will reform the money-oriented nature of the city assembly, attracting support from a wide range of the public.

The by-election was called after the resignation of the former city assembly speaker who had been arrested for leaking to a company information concerning a bidding for an outsourcing contract of the city’s waste disposal facility operation.