The Fukuoka Prefectural Assembly on the 6th named the 15 members of a special investigative committee set up under the Local Autonomy Act to examine allegations that money changed hands over the posts of speaker and vice speaker. One of the 15 is Yasuke Hayashi, a prefectural lawmaker who repeatedly posted inappropriate comments from an anonymous social media account and was censured by the assembly for it. He was chosen by lot.
The committee is a hyakujo committee (hyakujo iinkai), a body the Local Autonomy Act lets an assembly convene with the power to summon witnesses and demand records.
Six of the 15 members come from among the lawmakers who submitted the motion to establish the committee, and one each from the five largest caucuses. The remaining four seats were to go to smaller caucuses, but five lawmakers including Hayashi sought them and talks failed to settle the allocation, so the assembly drew lots.
Hayashi is a former secretary to previous speaker Isao Kurauchi. In August, when the assembly took up a motion recommending that Kurauchi resign as speaker, Hayashi moved to halt the vote. He later left the Liberal Democratic Party caucus after it emerged that he had used the anonymous account to post criticism of a lawmaker who supported the allegations.
He voted against the motion to set up the committee. "I opposed it on the grounds that the contents of the motion should be worked out first," he told reporters. "I was not opposed to establishing it in itself."