Japan Press Weekly

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2013 February 20 - 26 [POLITICS]

Lift ban on election campaigning on Internet for voters, not business entities: JCP

Japan’s political parties are discussing the liberalization of the use of the Internet in election campaigns.

At present, making use of the Internet for campaigning is banned by the Public Offices Election Law.

The Japanese Communist Party argues that the legislation should be revised so that political parties, candidates and voters can use the Internet and e-mail freely in campaigns because the freedom for election campaigns is a fundamental human right.

All parties agree to deregulate the campaigns using the Internet. The points of contention are how far the range of users should be and whether to permit the use of paid online advertisement.

The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic and Komei parties and the opposition Democratic and Your parties propose that companies and other organizations should be allowed to utilize SNS in electioneering along with eligible voters.

The JCP insists that the permission for the use of the Internet should be given to individual electors, not to enterprises and organizations. The party argues that if big businesses mount large-scale election campaigns using their power of money, the very political rights of the general public and the freedom of elections might be violated.

Both the Democratic and Your parties also suggest lifting the ban on paid Internet advertising for political parties and candidates. The removal of the ban, however, would give unfair advantage to well-financed parties and damage the fairness of elections.

Related past article:
> Liberalizing online election campaign is commonsense move: JCP Ichida [February 5, 2013]