This is not "news" since this law exists since 1950, but in this age of cybercommunication, this can only shock.
Mainichi Shimbun : Internet-savvy candidates hampered by Japan's archaic election laws
Originally Posted by mainichi
This is not "news" since this law exists since 1950, but in this age of cybercommunication, this can only shock.
Mainichi Shimbun : Internet-savvy candidates hampered by Japan's archaic election laws
Originally Posted by mainichi
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"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?", Winston Churchill.
And people were shocked when hanging Chads were a problem in florida?
no tv ads either. Phone banks are fine.... go figure
Plus to run for office you must pay 3,000,000 yen registration fee.
I am not sure how much people have to pay (if they have to) to register for election in other developed countries, but 3,000,000 yen doesn't seem very democratic. In fact, that means that only rich people can run for office. It is not unlike the early election system in the 19th and early 20th centuries when only people who pay a minimum number of tax could vote in elections, so that the ordinary masses would keep out of politics.Originally Posted by donpaulo
Restricting the ways politicians can spread their political programme by banning mass media, phamplets and websites, is clearly another way to reduce democracy. How can people vote for a candidate when they don't know what most candidates ideas are and cannot easily find out about it ?
Then, I wouldn't call democratic a system in which the leaders of political parties can vote for the whole party, and individual elected lawmakers have no independent right to vote the way they wish. => see article
It is therefore no wonder that the World Audit ranked Japan 30th in terms of democracy, after such countries as Uruguay, Costa Rica or Mauritius (and after all Western countries of course). => see article
Well, it is not unusual to have restrictions for who can run for election or certain demands that candidates or parties need to fullfill before running for election. In Denmark (which is usually seen as very democratic) you need to gather approx. 20.000 confirmed signatures before running for parliament. The confirmation means that after you get a persons signature, you have to send them a letter where they confirm their signature and send it to the authorities after signing it again.Originally Posted by Maciamo
This means that you have to have a lot of activists that put in a lot of work to get these signatures, which not many small parties do. It is an effective way to exclude minorities from the democratic process, and it means that there are becoming fewer and fewer parties in the danish parliament.
I do not really think that there is a big difference between asking people to fork out 3 mill yen or getting 20.000 signatures or whatever.The idea is the same: to reduce the number of candidates running for parliament, and you will find measures like this in almost every democratic country. I don't really find such measures democratic, but they are not special for Japan.
In Belgium, it's 5,000 signatures to found a new party (only 200 for the small German speaking area), or 5 signatures from current MP's for joining an existing party.Originally Posted by Daniel
I think that some EU countries do not have a minimum of signatures, and I have never heard of any amount of money to pay.
Does this mean that the ads for the Democratic Party of Japan (–¯Žå“}) on goo are in violation of this law? Or does that fall under some separate area of the law?
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I also wonder why Koizumi (president of the LDP) and Okada (president of the DPJ) have both appeared in TV ads several times in the last few days, when the electoral campaign is alreday started, which according to the article is illegal.Originally Posted by Glenn
I wish they'd update the law so we could get rid of those infernal sound trucks.
Clarify your remarks ?Originally Posted by mikecash
That... has got to be one of the daftest, most out-dated rules... words fail me.Japanese political candidates prohibited from using websites for their campaign
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