Political party turns election billboards into advertising displays

Tokyo’s gubernatorial election will be held next Sunday, and one party is causing a scandal because it has discovered how to make a fortune by renting out space on its election billboards.

Japan is also passionate about elections, the position of governor of Tokyo, the country’s capital, is at stake. Voters are called to the polls on Sunday, July 7. Candidates are holding meetings and classic poster campaigns. Japan, like France, has fairly strict electoral rules. To avoid overly eccentric candidacies, the law requires each candidate to pay at least three million yen when they officially enter the race, three million yen is about 18,000 euros. Once this sum is paid, the candidate has the right to access the official campaign billboards to stick up their posters.

The country’s major political parties, which will try to win the Tokyo mayoralty, are playing the game, they have each registered a candidate. But a populist party, the anti-NHK Party, which essentially campaigns for the abolition of the public television license fee, had the idea of ​​registering 19 candidates for Sunday’s election. It therefore had to pay a total of 57 million yen, or 330,000 euros. But it plans to make this investment profitable by reselling its election signs. It even expects to make a big profit.

The leader of this populist party has identified a kind of legal loophole. He discovered that it is not formally forbidden to give away your billboards to third parties if they themselves respect the electoral code. So, this party rents out the billboards of its 19 fake candidates all over the city. In total, there are 14,000 official election billboard sites. You can rent your billboards for a day or a week, which millions of people pass by every day. It costs between 60 and 200 euros per day, per site.

Many customers have taken the bait. There are YouTubers who have bought space to promote their channel. They take pictures of themselves with a QR code. There are bars for young single women who advertise themselves. A young man looking for a girlfriend and boasting about his sexual prowess. Or an animal lover who rented billboards near his house to display his cat’s portrait.

The serious and official candidates are reacting rather badly, because their own very serious posters are drowned out by these totally fanciful posters. But the Ministry of the Interior will not have time to rectify the situation before the vote this weekend, which promises to be very close. Everything is being played out between the outgoing right-wing governor Yuriko Koike, a former journalist, and her main opponent from the center-left, who is called Renho and who is also a former journalist. On Sunday, 11 million voters will be called to the polls to decide between them.