Lower House Campaign Starts: Parties Must Debate Policies for Overcoming Difficult Problems / Chance for Voters to Determine Japan’s Future

Editorial

15:00 JST, October 15, 2024

The international situation is drastically changing and there are countless domestic issues that need to be addressed. There is no time to waste in dealing with these difficult problems.

The upcoming House of Representatives election is an important opportunity that will determine the future of Japan. Attention will be focused on the choice to be made by voters: Will a stable government be maintained, or will opposition parties fare well and the political situation be destabilized?

Voters need to thoroughly examine the policies and assertions made by various parties and candidates in the 12-day campaign period starting on Tuesday, and cast their judgment.

Urgent need to respond to global affairs

Campaigning for the House of Representatives election, the first to be held in about three years, officially starts Tuesday. About 1,300 candidates are running for the 465 seats in the lower house.

Japan’s nominal gross domestic product was overtaken by Germany’s last year, and Japan is now the fourth largest economy in the world. Although economic indicators are improving, such as employment and wages, many people must not be feeling this trend.

There is no end to the shrinking of the population, with the annual decline exceeding 800,000. Measures to deal with the low birth rate are urgently needed, but the government’s policies are biased toward giving out allowances.

The war in Ukraine and the conflicts in the Middle East have become protracted, and the international order is in danger of collapsing. As a member of the Group of Seven advanced countries and an economic superpower, Japan should be able to exert its diplomatic strength more and contribute to helping restore order.

After the lower house election, the U.S. presidential election will also be held. Regardless of who becomes U.S. president, Japan must strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance and maintain peace and stability in Asia. To that end, it is essential for Japan to strengthen its defense capabilities in addition to its diplomatic efforts.

For Japan to maintain its national strength, it is vitally important to stabilize its politics and to establish a system that can overcome various challenges.

Despite this reality, the policy pledges of the ruling and opposition parties do not convey an urgent sense that Japan is at a crossroads.

In its economic policy, the Liberal Democratic Party pledges to achieve wage increases that outpace inflation. However, the specific measures to achieve this have not gone beyond the scope of the LDP’s conventional ideas, with such slogans as promoting employment where remuneration is determined by the content of the job, and reskilling.

As for growth strategy, the LDP merely listed themes that the party has already discussed many times in the past, such as investments in decarbonization and digitization.

The election is an abrupt battle taking place soon after the launch of a new administration, so it seems the LDP is maintaining the policies of the previous Cabinet, but does it really think this will revive the economy?

CDPJ lacks novelty

The economic policies put forward by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan also lack novelty, with slogans such as “supporting wage increases through reskilling and thorough investment in people” and “focusing investment in green and digital fields.”

How will their growth strategies be complemented and increase corporate productivity so wage increases take root? The parties must compete with each other to devise concrete measures during the election campaign.

The CDPJ has explicitly said it will work to strengthen the nation’s defense capabilities in its security policy, but it has also emphasized that it “will not raise taxes” to do so. In addition, it has called for the suspension of the construction work to relocate the U.S. military’s Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture to the Henoko district in the city of Nago in the prefecture.

While acknowledging the need to strengthen defense capabilities, it is too irresponsible to oppose measures to secure the necessary funding.

The administration of the now defunct Democratic Party of Japan called for a halt to the work to relocate Futenma Air Station to Henoko, but later accepted the relocation plan after having failed to find an alternative site. It is astonishing that the CDPJ, many of whose members come from the DPJ, is still repeating the same argument today.

In the upcoming lower house election, the single-seat constituency race will be held under the “plus 10, minus 10” format, from the viewpoint of correcting vote-value disparity.

This rezoning takes into consideration the Supreme Court’s decisions to prioritize equality in vote values, and a total of 10 seats were added in five prefectures, including Tokyo and Kanagawa, while 10 others were cut across 10 prefectures, including Miyagi and Wakayama.

Including rezoning that did not involve changes to the number of seats in a prefecture, the latest rezoning affected a record-high 140 constituencies across 25 prefectures. Many people may feel confused about which constituencies they are in as a result of the rezoning.

Possible impact of rezoning

If the number of lawmakers in rural areas continues to fall due to insisting on the equality of vote values, it will be harder for the voices in rural areas to be reflected in politics. This could shake the foundations of representative democracy, in which voters entrust national politics to the representatives they have elected.

Is the current system — determining the number of Diet seats based solely on the need to correct vote-value disparities — appropriate? Parties need to debate this issue during the election campaign.

Another important topic is reviewing the system of allowing candidates to stand in both single-seat constituency races and proportional representation segments, which can allow unsuccessful candidates in the constituency race to make a comeback win in the proportional representation segment.

The LDP decided not to allow some members — those who failed to include revenue from the sale of fundraising party tickets in their political funds reports, but whom the party officially endorsed to race in their constituency — to run in the proportional representation segments. However, this issue should not be considered as a matter for punishment, but rather a way of ensuring that the will of the people is fairly reflected.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Oct. 14, 2024)