One month after an expert panel proposed key electoral reforms to correct wide vote-value disparities between urban and less-populated areas, major political parties remain divided on the issue, Lower House Speaker Tadamori Oshima revealed Monday.
After months of stalemate, the major parties tasked the third-party panel with hammering out reform proposals to correct perhaps the most fundamental problem facing Japanese democracy today, and agreed to "respect" its conclusions, a promise they now seem loathe to carry through.
Specifically, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, at least for now, is refusing to accept a seat allocation method proposed by the panel to narrow the vote-value disparities.