Japan Press Weekly

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2015 December 16 - 22 [POLITICS]

JCP Kokuta condemns panel report calling for cutting number of Diet seats

An advisory panel to the Speaker of the House of Representatives approved a draft report on December 16 calling for reducing the number of seats in the Lower House by 10 to 465. Japanese Communist Party Diet Policy Commission Chair Kokuta Keiji criticized the draft for leading to abandoning the will of the people.

The draft report recommends reducing the number of seats from single-seat constituencies by six and those from proportional representation districts by four, while maintaining the current combined system. At a news conference after the panel meeting, former Tokyo University President Sasaki Takeshi, chairing the advisory council, boasted that a total of 465 seats in the Lower House would be the smallest in Japan’s postwar history. He added, “Frankly speaking, we have no clear standards for cutting the number of seats.”

JCP Kokuta told reporters in the Diet building, “It is outrageous that the panel gave top priority to decreasing the number of lawmakers. The reduction of Diet seats will amount to forsaking the popular will and we cannot accept that.”

Referring to the fact that the chair of the panel offered no grounds for the reduction, Kokuta said, “This is not even worth being called a ‘draft report’.”

The JCP legislator went on to point out that the present system centered on single-seat constituencies continues producing significant gaps between the percentage of votes cast for a political party and the number of seats it obtains. He underlined the need to reform the existing system to reflect the will of voters more accurately by eliminating single-member constituencies.

Past related article:
> JCP Kokuta opposes ‘third-party organ’ to maintain single-seat constituency system [June 16, 2014]