YouTuber-Turned-Lawmaker Expelled From Parliament

gamerant.com:

Famous YouTuber Yoshikazu Higashitani, better known as GaaSyy, has been expelled from the Japanese parliament for not showing up to work. This development arrives mere days after another YouTuber was hit with a five-year prison sentence in what's turning out to be a bad month for controversial content creators.

GaaSyy rose to prominence for his YouTube videos covering celebrity gossip and scandals. His channel boasted over 1.2 million subscribers in summer 2022, when it was indefinitely suspended. Around that time, the 51-year-old was elected as a representative of the upper house of the Japanese parliament. Higashitani leveraged his internet fame into nearly 300,000 votes that secured him a place in the National Diet alongside one other member of the single-issue NHK party opposing license fees for Japan's national broadcasting organization.

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In a near-unanimous 235 to 1 vote, GaaSyy has been expelled from the country's top legislative body on March 15. He's only the second lawmaker to be ousted from the National Diet in the history of Japan and the first to receive such a treatment in over 70 years, as well as the first to be expelled for not showing up to work. The legislature recently ordered him to deliver a personal apology to his colleagues over his lack of appearances, but GaaSyy – who's been operating out of Dubai in recent times – does not intend to return to Japan for the time being, having said as much in a March 7 Instagram video wherein he announced he's currently supporting earthquake relief in Turkey. He also used the occasion to pledge to donate his parliamentary salary to relief efforts in the Middle Eastern country.

GaaSyy's