A Lower House lawmaker who resigned his seat in February amid an electioneering donations scandal will be unable to run in that district again for five years because of a separate violation of campaign rules by a senior aide, a source said Monday.
Takeshi Tokuda, former member for Kagoshima Prefecture's No. 2 single-seat constituency, failed to appeal the ban under the so-called guilt by association rules of the public offices election law — and the deadline for doing so has now passed. The law bans any politician from running in the same constituency for five years if a chief campaigner for the politician is found guilty of violating the law and is given a prison sentence. In the latest in a series of lawsuits over Tokuda's 2012 election campaign, a 70-year-old chief campaigner in one district was found guilty in April of illegal campaigning.