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DPJ postpones bill to grant local voting rights to permanent foreign residents

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The government has abandoned proposing a bill to grant local voting rights to permanent foreign residents in Japan during the current Diet session, in the face of intense opposition from coalition partner People’s New Party (PNP).

“It’s extremely difficult for the government to sponsor such a bill due to differences over the issue between the ruling coalition partners,” said Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi.

Now, the attention is focused on whether ruling and opposition parties will launch a campaign to pass the bill as legislator-initiated legislation.

The suffrage bill was expected to be based on a draft that the DPJ prepared before it took over the reins of government, and it proposes to grant local suffrage to foreign residents from countries with which Japan has diplomatic ties. The DPJ’s proposal will cover some 420,000 Korean and other special permanent residents — both those who arrived in Japan before World War II and their offspring — as well as about 490,000 foreign residents from other countries.

The campaign to enact legislation on foreign suffrage in local elections dates back to 15 years ago.

Encouraged by the 1995 Supreme Court ruling that “foreign suffrage is not banned by the Constitution,” over 1,500 local assemblies adopted a resolution to support and promote legislation to grant local suffrage to permanent foreign residents in Japan — some 910,000 people as of the end of 2008.

However, as the passage of the bill becomes a real possibility along with the change of government, various views have emerged.

The National Association of Chairpersons of Prefectural Assemblies held an interparty discussion meeting on local suffrage for permanent foreign residents on Feb. 9 in Tokyo.

“It’s not the time for national isolation,” said Azuma Konno, a House of Councillors member of the DPJ, as he explained the party’s policy on the legislation at the meeting, raising massive jeers and objections from participants.

“We can introduce legislation which will make it easier for foreigners to be naturalized,” said Kazuyoshi Hatakeyama, speaker of the Miyagi Prefectural Assembly, while Kochi Prefectural Assembly Vice Speaker Eiji Morita countered, saying: “The DPJ excluded the suffrage bill from its manifesto for last summer’s election.”

The Mie Prefectural Assembly, in which DPJ members form the largest political group, was the only chapter to support the granting of local suffrage to permanent foreign residents.

“The argument against suffrage rings of ethnic nationalism,” said Speaker Tetsuo Mitani.

The fact that the DPJ’s legislation plan met with strong opposition during the meeting highlighted the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s strong sway over local assemblies, where its members manage to remain as the largest political group.

Opponents of the bill argue that it is unreasonable for the central government to make decisions on regional electoral systems while pledging to promote decentralization of authority. Furthermore, the national association of chairpersons adopted a special resolution calling on the government to focus more on the opinions of local assemblies on Jan. 21.

During the LDP Policy Research Council’s national meeting on Feb. 10, LDP lawmakers instructed its prefectural chapters to promote resolutions opposing foreign suffrage at respective local assemblies, in a bid to undermine the Hatoyama administration and the DPJ in cooperation with regional politics.

According to the chairpersons’ association, before the change of government last summer, a total of 34 prefectures supported the granting of local suffrage to foreign residents; however, eight reversed their positions after the DPJ came into power. The trend is expected to accelerate further, pointing to antagonism between the nation’s two largest political parties, as well as the conflicts between the DPJ-led national government and local governments.

The Chiba Prefectural Assembly, which adopted the resolution supporting foreign suffrage in 1999, reversed its position in December last year.

“We cannot believe they overturned their own decision,” said an official at Mindan’s Chiba Prefecture branch. The branch, which has a close relationship with LDP lawmakers, had owed the prefecture’s previous decision to support the suffrage bill to the efforts of LDP members in the prefectural assembly.

The Ibaraki Prefectural Assembly, too, is one of the eight local assemblies that went from for to against suffrage. Mindan’s Ibaraki branch has also expressed its disappointment, saying: “Assembly members are using the issue as part of their campaign strategy for the coming election.”

According to the National Diet Library, foreign residents are granted local suffrage in most major developed countries.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100227p2a00m0na009000c.html

Business lobby to end donation drive

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Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) plans to stop soliciting political donations from its members starting this year, in part because of the ascendancy of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which opposes such fund raising, sources said Wednesday.

The move by the nation’s most influential business lobby, with a membership of 1,600 companies and organizations, could result in a sharp drop in political donations, the sources said.

In 2008, it raised about 3 billion yen ($33 million) in donations from its members. Nearly 2.7 billion yen went to the Liberal Democratic Party, which was toppled from power in the Lower House election last August after more than five decades of almost uninterrupted rule.

But Nippon Keidanren leaders concluded that its orchestration of donations was incompatible with the DPJ’s political platform and growing public outrage at scandals involving political donations.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201002250444.html

900 axed JNR unionists may get ¥29.5 million each

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A 23-year-old dispute over the dismissal of unionized workers at the Japanese National Railways may finally be heading toward a resolution now that the ruling bloc and an opposition party have drafted a ¥27 billion settlement plan.

The package, hammered out Tuesday by the three coalition partners and New Komeito, calls for a payment of ¥29.5 million each to about 900 former JNR workers who have sued over their dismissal and asks the current Japan Railway companies to hire about 230 of them who are 55 years old or younger, according to sources.

In exchange, the workers will drop their lawsuits.

The proposed ¥27 billion payout would be undertaken by the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency, an independent administrative agency that inherited JNR’s debts after it was privatized and split up in 1987.

Representatives of the railway agency and the National Railway Workers Union, known as Kokuro, are expected to sign a compromise deal based on the package, the sources said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100225a2.html

No one-size-fits-all for foreign suffrage

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How the rest of the world deals with aliens at the ballot box

Support has been surprisingly muted for the Hatoyama administration’s push toward suffrage for foreign permanent residents, even among the constituencies such a law would enfranchise. The debate is definitely a hot one, sparking a number of protests against the plan around Tokyo, with opposition logic ranging from the rational (“They should nationalize”) to xenophobic (“Foreigners who hate Japan will take over the country”).

Giving voting rights to noncitizens is of course a controversial move, with implications in terms of sovereignty, democracy, integration and discrimination. But it is an issue many countries have been dealing with for generations as they grappled with the legacy of colonization and mass migration. While still generally an exception to the rule, over 40 countries around the world give legal aliens the right to vote in some capacity, employing a wide range of systems to address equally varied concerns.

Laws range from the plain (any permanent residents having resided in Iceland continuously for at least five years may vote) to complex (in Switzerland, foreigners may not vote on the national level, but may vote, and even run for office, in some cantons and/or municipalities). A few countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, have over the years taken away suffrage for foreign residents

Within Asia, the South Korean government made two big leaps simultaneously in 2005 by lowering the voting age to 19 and ushering in foreign suffrage in local elections for those who have been permanent residents for three years or more. According to the National Election Commission, at the time of local polls in May 2006 there were only 6,579, mostly Taiwanese, residents that benefited from the new legislation on noncitizen voting rights.

“Korea is now the first nation in Asia to grant voting rights to foreign residents,” The Herald newspaper quoted Kim Cheol, deputy director of public relations at the Nation Election Commission, as declaring. “We hope this will accelerate a move to integrate foreign communities into the homogenous society.”

The issues of foreign suffrage in South Korea and Japan are deeply interlinked due to the legacy of Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and the end of the war. There is speculation that one of the reasons the move was made in Seoul was in the hope that Japan would give similar rights to its foreign residents, particularly the nearly 600,000 Koreans who live here. South Korean foreign and trade minister Yu Myung Hwan hinted as much during a meeting earlier this month with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, and again called on Japan to grant local-level suffrage to permanent residents, a measure Okada said the government was “considering.”

“I think enfranchising immigrants is the logical next step in the fulfillment of the practice of democracy,” says Ron Hayduk, political science professor at the City University of New York, author of “Democracy For All” and vocal supporter of immigrant suffrage. Proponents of noncitizen voting such as Hayduk believe that while citizenship is a viable solution for some, for those such as Japan’s Zainichi Koreans, the decision to renounce citizenship of their home country is not only an issue of loyalty, but also of familial ties and material investments, particularly as Japan does not permit dual citizenship.

But while municipalities around the globe buy into foreigner suffrage under the principles of “No taxation without representation” and immigrant involvement, there is no one-size-fits-all policy for giving noncitizens the right to have a say in what many strongly feel is an arena where only naturalized or native-born citizens have a role to play.

“What works in one jurisdiction isn’t going to necessarily work in another,” Hayduk admits, “but precluding the option to vote for long-term residents creates opportunities for continued inequality and discriminatory policies.”

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100223zg.html

Chinese students cautioned after GEOS English schools in Australia collapse

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China’s Education Ministry on Sunday warned students considering studying overseas against Australian schools run by the GEOS group after more than 40 Chinese students were left stranded with the group’s collapse.

More than 2,300 students in GEOS group schools across Australia were affected after the college closures. The schools were scattered across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Cairns.

GEOS is a Japanese company which owns hundreds of colleges around the world. The GEOS group has run out of money for its Australian colleges,according to Australian media reports.

Chinese embassies and consulates in Australia are negotiating with local authorities to settle the issue to safeguard students’ legitimate rights.

The Education Ministry has drawn up a recommendation list of nearly 15,000 schools in 33 countries worldwide on its website. The recommended schools are relatively trustworthy and reliable.

Australia has been a preferred destination for overseas education for Indian and Chinese students.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the number of Chinese student enrollments was 146,000 by June 2009, up an average annual 16 percent over the past six years.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-02/22/c_13182360.htm

Average per capita income up for fourth straight year

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The national average per capita income has increased for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Annual Report on Prefectural Accounts for fiscal 2007 released by the Cabinet Office.

The figure, averaged from prefectural averages, came to approximately 3.05 million yen, a 0.7 percent increase from fiscal 2006. While the variation coefficient dropped for the first time in six years, it still remained high, indicating wide disparities in income among prefectures; there was a nearly 2.5 million yen difference between prefectural per capita income in top-earning Tokyo and Okinawa Prefecture, which came in last place.

Twenty-nine prefectures experienced an increase from the previous fiscal year.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100220p2a00m0na011000c.html

English school ordered to close / Court warned Fortress Japan last year over coercive sales practices

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The Consumer Affairs Agency and the Tokyo metropolitan government on Thursday ordered a Tokyo-based English-language conversation school chain operator to suspend operations due to its coercive method of selling its services to university students and others.

Fortress Japan talked customers into signing contracts for the purchase of English-learning programs, often telling students, “You’ll never be able to find work with your current English-language abilities.”

The authorities issued the order based on the Specified Commercial Transactions Law.

A consumer organization certified by the prime minister filed a lawsuit last year arguing that Fortress Japan’s way of soliciting customers was against the law. Last March, the plaintiff and the company reached the first settlement of its kind in the nation.

There are seven consumer organizations across the nation certified by the prime minister to file lawsuits against companies over aggressive sales schemes. The certifications were introduced to discourage dubious or illegal sales schemes before damages proliferate.

But the authorities said Fortress Japan continued to use unlawful sales practices after the settlement, leading to the stricter punishment by the agency.

According to Fortress Japan’s Web site and other sources, the company has operated English-language schools under various names, including Global Trinity, in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sendai and Fukuoka.

The Kansai Consumers Support Organization (KC’s), an Osaka-based nonprofit organization that filed a lawsuit against the company, and the agency said Fortress Japan solicited students who gathered at job interview meetings, telling the students that they could attend the schools’ lectures any time at their convenience without any limit on the number of classes.

The company had the students sign contracts for eight-to 10-month courses for 500,000 yen to 600,000 yen.

But the lectures were offered only on limited dates and some students complained they could attend lectures only about once a month.

Also, employees of Fortress Japan obstructed students attempting to walk away from sales pitches, trying to persuade them to buy lesson packages by saying such things as, “You won’t be able to perform sufficiently when you start working for a company.”

The agency and the metropolitan government judged that the way Fortress Japan solicited customers constituted false explanations and harassment, which are illegal.

They intend to publicly censure Zenken Career Center–which was renamed as Linguage Corp.–a Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo-based company that was entrusted to manage the English conversation schools.

KC’s filed a lawsuit with the Osaka District Court demanding Fortress Japan halt its unlawful soliciting practices. Last March, the company admitted that its way of soliciting was unlawful and reached a settlement in which the company promised to cancel contracts and refund customers.

But KC’s said the company continued to unlawfully solicit students for business after the settlement, with at least 71 confirmed unlawful acts committed up to November.

In recent years, there has been an increasing number of consultations and complaints about similar vicious sales pushes on students during job searches.

In many of instances, students were told they would not be able to find jobs unless they had certain skills the salespeople were selling, making the students anxious.

According to the National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan, there were 948 inquiries from job-searching students about similar incidents over five years from April 2004.

In fiscal 2009, the center received 223 such complaints by the end of January.

Last April, a man in the Kansai region who was then a third-year university student was approached by a female employee of Fortress Japan in front of his university campus. She asked him to fill out a simple survey about English conversation and job-hunting activities.

He wrote his name and phone number on the sheet, and was frequently called about attending an introduction meeting.

He finally agreed to attend a meeting, but ended up being confined in a small room together with a male employee of the company for three hours and was cajoled into signing a contract for lessons.

When the student tried to refuse, the employee looked down at him and demanded he sign the contract, telling him, “You’ll never survive in the business world with such a carefree attitude.”

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20100219TDY02303.htm

Foreign trainees easily exploited as bosses take advantage of system

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The controversy should have heated up after last month’s ruling by the Kumamoto District Court, which found in favor of four female Chinese trainees who sued their employer and the agent that arranged for that employment. The trainees were awarded unpaid wages amounting to ¥12.8 million as well as damages to the tune of ¥4.4 million. The plaintiffs, who worked for a sewing company, said they were forced to work up to 15 hours a day with only two or three days off a month. They did not receive overtime pay.

Trainees are ostensibly in Japan to learn some sort of skill they can take back to their home country and make a living from. They are not supposed to work overtime because technically they aren’t here as employees, but no one has believed that lie for years now, and the JITCO official’s admission attests to the fact that the real reason for the trainee program is to provide Japanese businesses with cheap labor. This system has given rise to a racket involving semiprivate brokers who traffic in workers from Asia who want to come to Japan and make a lot of money in a short period of time.

The Kumamoto case wasn’t the first in which trainees allegedly have turned on their employers violently, and it wasn’t the first time somebody died as a result. Japanese courts seem to be coming around to the conclusion that these workers are being exploited unfairly. Presently, there are 13 lawsuits being heard in Japanese courts brought by representatives of disgruntled trainees, as well as three arbitration cases.

One that could attract attention involves a construction company in Kawasaki that sued some Chinese trainees who had joined a labor union so that the union could negotiate with the company for unpaid wages. The company sued for “confirmation” that it didn’t owe the trainees any money. The trainees then countersued. The lawyer for the labor union is confident that the ruling, due in May, will favor the trainees and expose the reality that they are here to work and thus deserve protection just like any other workers.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20100214pb.html

Survey: 14 prefectures against foreign suffrage

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Fourteen of the nation’s 47 prefectural assemblies oppose or have called for prudence in granting permanent foreign residents the right to vote in local elections, a recent survey by the National Association of Chairpersons of Prefectural Assemblies has found.

Of the 14, eight including Chiba and Ishikawa had previously voted in favor of enfranchising non-Japanese with permanent resident status.

Observers point out that the move represents a revolt by conservatives that control many local assemblies, as legislation granting foreign residents the right to vote grows ever more likely under the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) administration.

Muneyuki Shindo, professor of political science at Chiba University, suspects that the LDP headquarters have asked affiliated assembly members to oppose any legislation granting permanent foreign residents the right to vote in a bid to cause a split within the DPJ-led administration.

“LDP members and those supporting the LDP are dominant in many local assemblies. I suspect that the LDP headquarters is creating a trend in which many of the local assemblies are opposed to the move and trying to cause a split within the administration,” he said.

Among municipal assemblies, at least 13, including the Yamagata Prefecture city of Tendo, had adopted resolutions against giving permanent foreign residents in Japan the right to vote in local elections by the end of last year, according to a survey by the National Association of Chairpersons of City Councils.

On the other hand, the Koganei Municipal Assembly in western Tokyo voted in December in favor of voting rights for non-Japanese with permanent resident status. Only four of its 24 members are affiliated with the LDP.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100212p2a00m0na001000c.html