Japan routinely rigging and manipulating “town meetings,” meant to air the views of ordinary voters

[Flabbergasted]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/world/asia/15cnd-japan.html


The upper house of parliament, controlled by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, also passed laws that would convert the country’s Defense Agency into a full-fledged Ministry of Defense, and would make overseas missions a main duty of the nation’s defense forces. The lower house had already passed the measures.

Mr. Abe is pushing Japan to rebuild national pride and claim a larger role in the world after six decades of constitutionally enforced pacifism and reticence. But to critics, especially of the education law, the steps taken today move Japan away from its postwar ideals and hark vaguely back to the expansionist imperial Japan of the 1930’s.

The bills were adopted today despite a motion of no confidence in Mr. Abe’s administration that was introduced by opposition parties. The motion was prompted by reports on Wednesday that the government had for years been routinely rigging and manipulating “town meetings,” meant to air the views of ordinary voters. The government secretly paid people to attend the meetings and ask pre-arranged questions or make supportive statements about the government’s policy agenda, including the revision of the education law.

The rigged meetings took place during the tenure of Mr. Abe’s predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. As the chief cabinet secretary under Mr. Koizumi, Mr. Abe organized the town meetings. He also championed the rewritten education law as a pillar of his conservative agenda, which also includes revising the pacifist Constitution.

Japanese conservatives have argued for years that the 1947 education law overemphasized individual rights relative to the public good, and that it contributed to everything from the erosion of communities to the rise in juvenile crime.




And next a nuclear weapons program.