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On March 22, the Secretaries General of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japan Restoration Party, and Your Party held talks in the Diet building. Regarding the reform of the electoral system of the House of Representatives and the reduction of the number of Diet members, the Secretaries General shared the following views: (1) The proposal of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) sacrifices clarity for the sake of giving consideration to the New Komeito party. The LDP’s proposal to reduce the number of proportional representation seats by 30 and preferentially allocating 60 seats to minority parties raises further questions of constitutionality from the perspective of equality in vote value; (2) The LDP’s proposal to reduce the number of proportional representation seats by 30 from the current 180 seats is exceedingly insufficient; (3) The LDP’s proposal calls for the swift passage of the bloc reorganization proposal (to reduce the number of single-seat constituencies by five), which was passed at the extraordinary Diet session last year as an emergency measure ahead of the approaching general election. However, the Sapporo and Fukuoka High Courts have ruled that this emergency corrective law was “different in quality” from the intent of the Supreme Court’s ruling, which deemed that the method of giving one single-district seat to all 47 prefectures was unconstitutional. In light of this, the LDP’s proposal lacks a fundamental review for correcting the disparity in the single-seat constituency system.
Secretary General Goshi Hosono stated, “We, the DPJ, propose to reduce the number of proportional representation seats by 20%, which was also advocated during the election. Meanwhile, our thinking has been that in order to obtain the agreement of each party, the issue of reducing the number of single-seat constituencies must be dealt with flexibly. We have been explaining this to the people of Japan.” Hosono expressed his resolve to ensure the reduction of the number of Diet members through earning the support of as many party members as possible.
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