Roundup: Over 9,000 Japanese scholars oppose Abe's security legislation

Over 9,000 scholars have signed up in an appeal issued by a newly formed scholar association opposing the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to ram through a series of unconstitutional security-related bills, according to the group's founder on Friday at a press conference.

Manabu Sato, professor at Gakushuin University and Emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo, said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan that the academics who signed up in the appeal share the value that Japan should keep following its war-renouncing commitment written in the country's Constitution since the end of World War II.

"Our generation is very much proud of being a country that never wages a war in the postwar era in the past 70 years and none of Japanese youth and children were dead because of war," said Sato, who sees Japan as standing at a critical juncture whether or not to overturn its seven-decade peaceful path.

Abe, a well-known hawkish and conservative leader, lifted a constitutional ban imposed on the country's Self-Defense Forces ( SDF) to exercise the right to collective self-defense last July and currently is trying to push forward the security legislation package, which, if enacted, will pave a "legal way" to the SDF to use the collective defense.

The legislation will allow the SDF to engage armed conflicts overseas and to help defense others even if Japan is not attacked, but over 90 percent Japanese constitutional scholars, according to recent survey, concluded that such legislation violates the Japanese supreme law which bans the SDF from combating abroad and defending others, or exercising the collective defense.

"The bills are unconstitutional. There is no way you can argue that the bills to be constitutional," said Koichi Nakano, professor of political science at Sophia University, on the same occasion and added that he believes that the way the government is trying to ram through the bills is undemocratic.

The prominent pundit went on to say his third last reason why he opposes the bills is that the government itself always went bankruptcy logically when they tried to explain what exactly the bills are about.

"Each time Prime Minister Abe, Mr. Kishida (foreign minister) and Mr. Nakatani (defense minister) open mouth, we have, in fact, less clear of an idea what the bills permit the government to do."

Nakano noted that constant protests against the bills are held every week by activist groups, students and even women, a population that seldom participate in social activities here in Japan, adding that Abe's high-handed ways to push forward the bills are, ironically, energizing and making up opponents to fight against the legislation.

But the situation Nakano and his fellows face is pretty tough and urgent as the ruling camp that groups Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its small partner of the Komeito Party eyes to vote on the bills on July 15th in a lower house committee and then the lower house of the bicameral Diet.

Moreover, it is believed that the bills have a great chance to be passed since the ruling bloc is holding a crushing majority in the chamber.

Meanwhile, the government has showed its determinacy to pass the bills in the current Diet Session which has been extended to late September, the longest extension in postwar period in Japan, and is prepared for a dive of 30 percentage points in supporting rate after ramming through the bills, according to Nakano who cited an unnamed source that quoted Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga in a private conversation.

However, Nakano said that the extension of the Diet debating is also a good news for their fight as on one hand, the bills will be also voted in the upper house, in which the LDP solo maintains no majority, and on the other, the more time the government spent in Diet debating, the more bad news, including the problem over the construction of the stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the issue of private data leak in pension system, will give a blow on the government's credibility.

"Even if they ram through the bills, they are at the bottom line unconstitutional and not supportive by the Japanese people, the law are going to be useless," Nakano said, adding that they hope that such a message is going to make sufficient worry among those in the government who are rather more rational and logical to see that there is little point in the law.

Mari Osawa, professor at the University of Tokyo, said that the so-called security bills will jeopardize social security of Japanese younger generation that is seeing increasingly living in poverty due to the government's poor performance in poverty reduction by its ill income redistribution.

A poll by the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese daily, showed late last month that the supporting rate for Abe's Cabinet plunged to 39 percent, matching a record low, as more than half of voters oppose the security legislation being debated in the Diet. The poll also said that the disapproval rate for the Cabinet rose to 37 percent from 32 percent in the previous survey in mid- May, when the support rate was 45 percent. Endi