I agree that Abe´s success in expanding police and security powers was far from a positive achievement in many respects. For example, while Japan clearly needed a new law criminalizing the leaking of state secrets by civil servants (and the DPJ had been promising to enact such a law), the law Abe enacted was clearly illiberal and a strike against press freedom in that it contained provisions for prosecuting journalists who publish such leaked information.

That, and some attempts to intimidate the press are reasons why Japan´s position in global rankings on press freedom fell during his administration.

Best Regards,


Paul Midford
差出人: ssj-forum-bounces@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp <ssj-forum-bounces@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp> が SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp> の代理で送信
送信日時: 2020年9月25日 5:38:57
宛先: ssj-forum@cal.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp
件名: [SSJ: 11165] Re: Assessing Abe

From: Erika Alpert <erika.alpert@gmail.com>
Date: 2020/09/18


With all due respect, in this political moment of widespread rethinking
of the role of police in society (and not only in the US), should we
really characterize the expansion of police and military powers as
accomplishments?

All best,
Erika

Dr. Erika R. Alpert (she/they)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
School of Sciences and Humanities
Nazarbayev University
On Sep 17, 2020, 09:13 +0600, SSJ-Forum Moderator
<ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>, wrote:

From: Lawrence Repeta <repeta55@live.com>
Date: 2020/09/15


Dear Forum Members,

The Abe administration achieved great success in expanding police power
by passing legislation that LDP leaders had sought for decades. Key
achievements:

Expanded wiretapping authority, 2) formally recognized plea
bargaining (first employed in the Ghosn case); 3) expanded state secrecy
powers, backed by sharply increased penalties against leakers and
others; 4) legislation creating the crime of "conspiracy."

The Abe team managed to achieve all this despite opposition from the bar
associations, much of the news media and public intelligentsia, and tens
of thousands of protesters that repeatedly gathered before the Diet. I
think the polling data was nearly uniform in showing majorities opposed
to all of these initiatives. Abe managed to push all this through while
winning every election.

At the same time that he bolstered police powers, Abe managed to bypass
Constitution Article 9, first by the 2014 Cabinet resolution and then by
the 2015 package of national security laws.


This is a tremendous record of achievement.

Larry Repeta


~~~~ ** ~~~~~ ** ~~~~~ ** ~~~~>
www. lawrencerepeta.com

~~~~ ** ~~~~~ ** ~~~~~ ** ~~~~