 | "Rants" by Akira
(2003-11-10) |
Yesterday (11/9 Sunday) was Japan's national election day. There are 480 seats in "shuugiin (there are two houses: shuugiinn and sangiin. Sangiin election is... next year?)". 300 are chosen from a constituency (areas/districts) and 180 are from proportional representation (percent ratio). We voted for these two (+approvals of 9 supreme court judges) yesterday. Only 59.86% of voters came to vote and it became the second worst of all time (1996=59.65%, 2000=62.4%, 2003=59.86%). A lot of Japanese voters are loosing interest in government (especially young people living in big cities) and there are several reasons for that. I think the biggest reason is "unfairness in current voting system".
Most city people are very unhappy (including me) about Japanese voting system, since rural voters have more voting power than city voters. For example, Tokyo 6th District (population of 46,1774) and Tokushima 1st District (population of 21,4327) both can send one representative each (table of district populations vs number of representatives). In other word, one Tokushima citizen has 2.47 more power than one Tokyo citizen and Japanese law says that is OK.
It's important to hear voices from less populated country sides, but I think current system has gone too far. For years, all the tax money has been going to country sides (to build unnecessary useless airports, roads, and buildings) and we (the city people) have to work day and night to pay taxes... We can't change this trend, because we aren't given power to do so (2.47 difference). Don't you think it's unfair?
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