(07/15/09) - Ungovernable Japan Heads to Election
Opposition DPJ, calling for “change”, has a good chance of winning.
Mario Canseco – When Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi prepared for his retirement from public life in 2006, support for his cabinet remained above the 50 per cent mark. He had just overseen the privatization of Japan Post—the cornerstone of his domestic policy portfolio—and had faced the harshest criticism not for his management capabilities, but for his decision to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Koizumi left office as Japan’s third-longest serving post-war leader, and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is still struggling to rule without him almost three years later.
Mario Canseco – When Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi prepared for his retirement from public life in 2006, support for his cabinet remained above the 50 per cent mark. He had just overseen the privatization of Japan Post—the cornerstone of his domestic policy portfolio—and had faced the harshest criticism not for his management capabilities, but for his decision to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Koizumi left office as Japan’s third-longest serving post-war leader, and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is still struggling to rule without him almost three years later.
Earlier this month, Japanese prime minister Taro Aso called a general election, only a few weeks before the tenure of the House of Representatives—where the LDP holds a majority after a landslide victory under Koizumi in 2005—reached its end. Aso stands to become the third LDP prime minister in a row who fails to govern for more than 12 months. However, Aso’s future now lies directly in the hands of the voters.
The LDP, Japan’s natural governing political organization for more than five decades, heads to the Aug. 30 ballot as the underdog. Aso has so far been unable to generate confidence in his leadership, a situation that doomed the cabinets of Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda. Aso inherited Japan’s lingering problems: a spiralling public debt and an aging population. To make things even more complicated, Aso has had to face the brunt of the global economic crisis.
The approval rating for his cabinet has been particularly low recently, making the popularity of Koizumi’s government seem very distant. Several scandals have also tarnished the LDP’s reputation, most recently the resignation of deputy finance minister Koichi Hirata, who breached the government’s ethics guidelines when he sold $6.3 million U.S. worth of stock at an inflated price. Aso has not been the unifying force that the LDP needed at this stage. His decision to question the privatization of Japan Post led to internal rifts within the party.
With this background, a victory for the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) seems feasible. However, the DPJ also had to clean house after its leader, Ichiro Ozawa, was involved in a scandal of his own earlier this year. His chief aide Takanori Okubo was accused of accepting close to $212,000 U.S. in illegal donations from the Nishimatsu Construction company. After a few weeks of tension, and surveys that showed that Ozawa had become a liability, the stage was set for a snap leadership vote.
The DPJ settled on Yukio Hatoyama as its new leader. Hatoyama has clearly defined his priorities after taking over from Ozawa in May: tax relief, assistance for families with children, more peacekeeping operations featuring the Self Defence Forces (SDF) and a foreign policy that does not rely too heavily on the United States. Hatoyama has also attempted to Obamaize his campaign, claiming that Japanese voters are looking for "change." The opposition leader is already seen as a better choice to head the government than Aso.
Ideologically, both parties hold similar views. But it is on the economic front where Hatoyama stands to gain the most. The DPJ is appealing for a chance to rule, claiming that the current government has not been able to help families. The effects of the crisis, coupled with the evident disunity in the LDP, might facilitate the task at hand for the opposition.
All in all, the DPJ appears to have taken the right decision at the right time: dumping Ozawa when the whiff of dishonour threatened the best chance of a victory, and carefully positioning Hatoyama as an outsider and champion of the middle class.
The LDP may have finally run out of pretenders to fill Koizumi’s shoes, and it may be too late for the unpopular Aso to withstand the strength of a motivated opposition. The governing party will brand the DPJ as untested and inexperienced, but voters might be too upset with the situation to abandon the prospect of change.
