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Japan's lower house on Friday approved the national referendum bill in a bid to amend the country¡¯s post-war pacifist Constitution. The upper house is widely expected to pass the bill next month. Japanese laws stipulate that constitutional amendments can be put in motion only with the approval of more than two-thirds of both lower and upper house members and must then be put to a referendum. It has been virtually impossible to amend the Constitution, since the law on referendums has not been enacted. But the passage of the bill in the lower house has set the legal framework to make that possible. After the bill was passed, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he wished the constitutional amendment would take place during his tenure.
The national referendum law will enable the lower and upper houses of parliament to create their own committees to research constitutional amendments and make preparations for such changes. And beginning in 2010, national referendums will be possible to decide on constitutional amendments. Japan¡¯s ruling coalition has already secured the necessary two thirds of the seats in the lower house and plans to win more than two thirds of the seats in the upper house during elections in July. This prospect is reportedly very likely, considering the prevailing public sentiment in Japan. The collapse of Japan¡¯s 60-year-old pacifist constitution is about to happen.
Article 9 of Japan¡¯s constitution, enacted in 1947, binds Japan to a pacifist policy renouncing the use of war and force to settle international disputes and prohibits the country from possessing army, naval and air force combat capabilities. Conservative factions in Japan have been stubbornly pushing for an amendment since the 1950s, criticizing the constitution for having created a ¡°castrated¡± nation. The position of Japan¡¯s opposition Democratic Party on the issue is not much different.
With its breakneck speed of economic growth and looming prospect of outpacing Japan, nuclear-armed China has been keeping silent about Japan¡¯s constitutional amendment. But for Korea, Japan¡¯s regaining of its right to wage war symbolizes the reemergence of a regional threat, rather than a country returning to what it calls a ¡°normal¡± national status.
Moreover, the Abe regime has been reneging on the promises and apologies of previous administrations in the way it deals with the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, history texts and former sex slaves, in addition to its pursuit of amending its pacifist constitution. Under these circumstances, Japan¡¯s push to become what it thinks is a ¡°normal¡± nation is simply a marriage of economic might and military capabilities with a very weak sense of ethics and historical hindsight. A country with such attributes should be called ¡°abnormal.¡± The problem now facing Korea is how to view and deal with such an abnormal nation.
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