It must be the result of avoiding drastic reform and repeatedly implementing shortsighted responses. The harmful effects of further complicating the House of Councillors election system will not be small.
The Liberal Democratic Party has submitted to the Diet a bill to revise the Public Offices Election Law for reform of the upper house election system. The LDP contemplates enacting the bill during the current Diet session, after the session is extended, so the revised law can be applied to an upper house election set for the summer of next year.
While giving consideration to what will be proposed by opposition parties, the LDP should work toward consensus-building on the matter.
The revised Public Offices Election Law, which was enacted in 2015, stipulates in a supplementary provision that "a conclusion will be reached" on drastic electoral reform.
However, the LDP did not spend sufficient time in negotiations with the opposition parties, as it gave priority to compiling a bill to revise the Constitution that would dissolve combined prefectural constituencies.
It is hard to eliminate skepticism regarding the LDP's stance that it suddenly presented a new revision bill on the grounds that constitutional revision cannot be realized with just about one year left before the upper house poll.
The pillar of the revision bill for the Public Offices Election Law is the introduction of "special quotas" in which successful candidates in proportional representation elections would be chosen based on who the relevant party gives priority to.
The LDP says the introduction of special quotas is meant to secure the personnel that parties need. But its true aim must be to salvage incumbent LDP candidates who cannot run due to the creation of the combined Tottori-Shimane and Tokushima-Kochi prefectural constituencies. It is unavoidable for the LDP to be criticized as acting from partisan interests.
Flexible approach vital
Under the current proportional representation system with an unrestricted list of candidates, successful candidates are chosen in the order of the number of votes garnered by individual candidates. The hallmark of this system is that voters' intentions can be reflected more widely.
Setting special quotas blurs the concept of the system and makes it more complicated and hard to understand.
The LDP initially envisioned setting special quotas for the top two candidates, but the revision bill calls for making it possible for individual parties to decide freely whether to set quotas and the number of candidates subject to the quota system.
The parties are in effect allowed to choose between a restricted and unrestricted list or a mixture of the two systems. If the system differs from party to party, it will cause confusion among voters.
Along with the introduction of the special quota system, the number of seats up for grabs in proportional representation system will be increased by two in the LDP's bill.
This is mostly likely intended to avert a backlash from the LDP lawmakers elected under the proportional representation system, who would be disadvantaged by the adoption of the quota system, and from their support organizations. Its self-centered attitude is too much to tolerate.
As for constituency elections, the revision bill calls for increasing the number of seats up for grabs in the Saitama prefectural constituency by one to four, as a measure to rectify the disparities in vote value. As a result, the maximum vote value gap is likely to be less than three to one, down from 3.08 to one recorded in the previous upper house poll.
Because the upper house's electoral districts are established on the basis of prefectural units, correcting vote value disparities is no easy task. It should be allowed to reexamine the system flexibly without regard to the fixed number of seats. As long as only reducing the number of seats is pursued as a "painful reform," it is impossible to expect constructive debate on electoral reform.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 20, 2018)
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