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KOIZUMI'S
HOT SUMMER
If it's
my party, I do as I want to
By
Richard Hanson
TOKYO - If modern-day politicians
rode white horses and tilted at windmills, Japan would
be gazing at a sweat-glistened horse and a somewhat
disheveled rider galloping from the horizon of a rising
sun.
Okay, Tokyo doesn't have many horses and
sweaty-heat islands dominate instead of windmills. That
is unlikely to stop Japan's ambition-driven, if somewhat
winded, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi from saddling
up after the current tumultuous Diet (parliament)
session that closes on Wednesday to continue a crusade
of change and reform.
This is no small task. And
the goals of the reform-minded Lionheart (as admirers
and skeptics dubbed him) remain a bit murky. It is
clear, however, winning the leadership mantle of the
ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in April 2001, by
defeating an array of seasoned (read: old-guard)
opponents and drawing overwhelming popular support,
Koizumi is not a political fluke.
In his first
encounters with opposition to his agenda of reform, his
opponents within the LDP bloodied him. He has also
bloodied more than a fair share of those who stood in
his way while stumbling through a maze of hazards. There
is fierce resistance to change when money and power are
at stake. Nowhere is this more evident than in the
battle to loosen the grip of old-guard preservers of the
often corrupt public sector, especially when
public-works spending to build things is involved.
Koizumi gave ground on construction-type
sinecure and special interests. Publicly, he threw down
the gauntlet over the issue of privatizing the
post-office giant. There are two reasons that matter.
One, it is a subject he knows well. He took up
the post-office issue years ago when he was minister in
charge. Postal reform is a trophy issue that will help
his future ambitions. Two, the postal lobby in the LDP
was bound to step all over the issue, despite recent
scandals involving illegal activities by postal
employees involving political campaigns and other seamy
practices. So much for the benevolent country postmaster
image.
As it turned out, Koizumi made the LDP
diehards look foolish. This brought on the high-drama of
public live on television confrontation between the LDP
postal lobby and a sitting prime minister, who holds the
trump card in his pocket - dissolving the parliament.
Koizumi was not kidding when he declared his
willingness to go to the people if the LDP opponents
messed with his postal-reform bills. "If the LDP policy
committee members try to crush these bills, it means the
party is trying to crush my administration. That can
lead to a battle in which the LDP will crush my
administration or I will crush the LDP." (The national
broadcaster NHK translated "crush" into "kill"; either
way the point was made in Japanese.)
This sort
of grandstanding was effective for one simple reason.
The old LDP is much weakened as a party. Koizumi came
into his first influential ministerial posts in the
early 1990s just as the LDP lost its absolute grip on
power in 1993 for the first time since the party was
founded as a conservative, pro-business, pro-US
coalition in 1956. (The old joke is that the LDP is not
liberal, nor democratic, nor a party.)
An
upstart group of LDP renegades formed a coalition headed
by the newly formed (no longer extant) Japan New Party
with a patrician Morihiro Hosokawa as prime minister
duly elected by the Lower House of the Diet. Two more
non-LDP premiers were elected, including only the second
postwar Socialist, a bumbling Tomiichi Murayama.
Ryutaro Hashimoto, a former finance minister and
longtime aspirant to power, took back the Prime
Minister's Office for the LDP in 1996, but in an
uncomfortable coalition with opposition parties and amid
a serious economic slump. He served two terms. In April
2001, Hashimoto again stood for LDP leadership against
Koizumi and lost in the popular party vote.
Hashimoto could have been a more menacing
problem for Koizumi in the past few months. He leads the
largest personal LDP faction. In March, he was stricken
with a serious heart failure and was forced to sit out
the battles against Koizumi during the critical passage
of a fiscally austere national budget (fiscal year
2002).
Koizumi's message as a reformer candidate
and his rakish Don Quixote-like looks proved a huge
draws for the female vote. When he took office, his
popularity soared to more than 80 percent support, again
depending largely on a reformist image. Within the LDP,
Koizumi won kudos for leading the party to a victory in
last summer's election for the Upper House election (the
less powerful of the two parliamentary bodies).
This is where the prime minister began to slack
off. In the face of a worsening economy, the government
did little. Politically, he caused an international
scene by making good his intention to visit Yasukuni
Shrine in Tokyo, to pay respects to the spirits of
Japan's war dead. This is a serious issue with Korea and
China, especially since the spirits of class A war
criminals were enshrined at Yasukuni in the 1970s.
Koizumi won points in Japan, and with its US
ally, for its role in supporting the allies after the
September 11 World Trade Center attack and the ensuing
war in Afghanistan. President George W Bush would show
his gratitude this February when he made his first ever
trip to Japan. Koizumi learned early in his career from
senior mentors, such as former prime minister Yasuhiro
Nakasone, that strong relations with the United States
were an essential element in holding on to domestic
power as prime minister.
That lesson soon paid
off. Bush's visit to Tokyo came just as Koizumi's
support as measured in the polls plummeted from more
than 80 percent to near 40 percent. There were a couple
of lessons to be learned.
First is that polls
can be pretty much ignored if there are no immediate
threats to your hold on power. At that point there were
no credible challengers within the LDP. Another is the
importance of being seen trying to act on the problems
closest to the hearts and minds of the people. The
economy baffled the prime minister. So he took his case
for reform to the people whenever possible.
Political gurus will puzzle for years over the
improbable and almost comic, teary eyes and all,
theatrics that marked the start of the 2002 Diet session
in January and brought on the serious drop in support at
the polls.
Call it the bozo factor. These were
the sorry characters who paraded through the chambers of
Diet Building amid serious of scandals and feuds within
the LDP. These were the bozos that could threaten the
reform agenda.
They ranged from an emotional
(albeit popular) female foreign minister, Makiko Tanaka.
She, the daughter of a famous convicted-for-bribery
ex-premier, was caught in a party feud involving a slimy
lawmaker named Muneo Suzuki, connected vaguely with the
highly successful Afghanistan Conference hosted by Japan
to raise funds to rebuild that war-torn country.
Koizumi's support levels fell after he fired
Tanaka, making an enemy (Tanaka was later suspended from
the LDP for other reasons involving staff salaries). The
once-powerful member of the Ryutaro Hashimoto faction,
Muneo Suzuki, was forced out of the LDP for interfering
with the workings of the Foreign Ministry and later
arrested on charges of accepting a 5 million yen bribe.
The police are still detaining him.
Another
prominent LDP power broker, Koichi Kato, was disgraced
when it was found his former secretary and fundraiser
was accused of tax evasion. Kato quit the LDP and gave
up his seat in the Lower House. There were other
scandals that generally muddied the political waters.
This is where the story of Prime Minister Koizumi begins
to get interesting.
The lessons that Koizumi has
learned as prime minister are clear. If the LDP is
opposed to the policies that he believes, it is not very
useful to him. Privately, Koizumi has told other
like-thinking politicians that a breakup of the LDP
would not bother him.
That makes the upcoming
election battle for the position of governor of Nagano,
a large prefecture in the middle of Honshu, of great
interest. Nagano governor Yasuo Tanaka, a flamboyant
divorced bachelor who won election two years ago, was
ousted this month by a no-confidence vote of the
Prefectural Assembly.
The battle was ostensibly
over Tanaka's opposition to the building of more dams in
Nagano, which has received enormous amounts of central
government money over the past few decades for
public-works construction. Nagano was host to the 1998
Winter Olympics, which helped bring a fast-train service
from Tokyo to Nagano City and superhighways to the
landlocked, traditionally conservative LDP bastion.
Conservative, pro-public-works politicians from
rural farming constituencies dominate the Prefectural
Assembly. Tanaka appeals to roughly the same
constituency as Koizumi - urban, female (Koizumi is also
a divorced bachelor) and generally progressive. Former
governor Tanaka also has little in the way of a credible
candidate coming forward to oppose him in the election
to be held on September 1.
Faced with the
no-confidence vote, Tanaka chose the option to resign
rather than dissolve the Prefectural Assembly. The city
slicker Tanaka thus spoiled the assembly's strategy.
Naively, his opponents figured Tanaka would dissolve the
assembly and they could run their conservative selves
for re-election. (Only one prefectural governor in Japan
has been kicked out in a no-confidence vote, and he was
guilty of criminal behavior, not of offending the
assembly or a disagreement over policy.)
They
outfoxed themselves. In a country-bumpkin way, nobody
had thought to prepare a credible opponent to run
against Tanaka in the case of an election, which is
scheduled for Sunday, September 1. The assembly also
opened the door for carpetbaggers from the big city and
other political novices to muddy the waters.
As
of Friday, the list of possible candidates for governor
(including Tanaka) had grown to five. Few are flying
pro-dam, pro-construction flags or have political
experience. (Tanaka was a novice when he ran in 2000,
but was a well-known best-selling writer and popular
talent.)
One of the hopefuls appears to be a
blatant stalking horse for one of Koizumi's most
talked-about wanna-be challengers on the national
political scene. This is none other than the
good-looking, outspoken and extreme right-wing Tokyo
Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who came to the fore of
speculation this spring when Koizumi looked vulnerable
[See Japan's new star rises from the (crow's)
ashes, May 13].
His de facto candidate-to-be
is an unknown, Shu Ichikawa. He is the director of a
think-tank led by Governor Ishihara. When he stepped
forward on Thursday for the September 1 contest he said,
"Tanaka's role as liberator is over." It could have been
Ishihara growling about Koizumi. Ichikawa worked for the
trading firm Mitsui and Co before forming his own
consulting business.
Next is Nobuaki Hanaoka, a
former editorial writer for the conservative Sankei
Shimbun. He also announced on Thursday, saying: "I
support Mr Tanaka's 'no more dams' pledge." Hanaoka
thinks it would be more democratic to have discussed the
issue more thoroughly with prefectural leaders.
The only woman considering a run for the job is
an active Nagano lawyer, Keiko Hasegawa, who has
criticized Tanaka's political style and his decision to
stop the three dams from being built. She is backed by
the biggest of the factions in the assembly. A
46-year-old graduate student at Shinshu University, a
prefectural institution, rounds out the latest
candidates' list.
Tanaka has lost the active
support of a large labor-union group, the Nagano branch
of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), which
supported him in the last election. Rengo is unlikely to
back any of the other candidates. The Japan Communist
Party (JCP) endorses Tanaka.
This midsummer
political race is puzzling for one reason: the striking
absence of a major stake by big national parties. They
are steering clear of directly opposing or supporting
Tanaka. It may be that none wants to be closely
associated with a race that was brought on as much by a
clash of bad political "manners" between the governor
and the assembly as the issue of dams and construction.
The serendipitous nature of the Nagano poll
(assuming Tanaka wins) questions the future of the old
sort of party politics that began to crumble a decade
ago when the LDP first lost its mandate from the gods of
graft and corruption. Recent local elections have failed
to produce a who-won who-lost conclusion for the major
parties.
So what are parties are all about in
the mind of the voter?
There are voices to be
heeded on this matter. One is the new mayor of Yokohama,
Japan's largest city located near Tokyo. Mayor Hiroshi
Nakada, 37, beat a veteran LDP politician by waging a
popular grassroots campaign. He did so after serving
three terms in the Lower House of the Diet as an LDP
lawmaker. He believes that government should not control
people - it should be the other way around.
What
Nakada sees is a transformation of a society gone
stagnant, especially political parties. Such reformist
politicians have made inroads. Nakada sees Koizumi, whom
he likes, as one of them. "Koizumi never knows when he
may have to step down," Nakada says. "He has the will to
act. The problem is, the LDP doesn't."
That sort
of thinking, Nakada believes, can be turned into a
political movement and perhaps a national party.
There is no public suggestion that Koizumi is
going to bolt from the LDP. But there are signs that
within some powerful business organizations, such as
newly reconstituted Japan Business Federation (Nippon
Keidanren), there is much less sympathy for the LDP than
a decade ago. The old Keidanren was a major direct
contributor of funds from its big business members to
the ruling LDP. That stopped in 1993, when the LDP lost
power. It is unlikely ever to return to such a cozy
relationship. Nippon Keidanren was merged with
Nikkeiren, which coordinates labor relations for big
business, in May.
Recently, there have been
noises that factions in the LDP would just as soon see
Koizumi ousted. This gave rise to speculation that Tokyo
Governor Ishihara might be a third-party candidate for
the prime minister's job.
Koizumi's strategy
seems to be to polish his credentials as the leader of
the middle-of-the-road reform forces that have supported
him so far in his bid to lead the LDP. That is the same
group that is reflected in the popularity polls. Koizumi
in the past few weeks has seen his standing in the polls
rise among those who support him. As polls go, the
increases are larger than a simple margin of error and
probably mean actual gains. (Separately, a poll by the
Yomiuri Shimbun taken in June shows that of eligible
voters sampled, 82 percent said they mistrust
politicians and political parties, up 19
percentage points from a sampling in May 2001.)
Koizumi's immediate job is to prepare for a
possible reshuffle of positions in the ruling LDP in
September. He is aiming to fill posts with people who
agree with his policy agenda. This will extend to those
who are appointed to vice-minister-type positions in the
bureaucracy, which has heavily influenced his economic
and tax policy thinking so far.
September might
also be a chance for changes in the cabinet, which has
come under fire for mixed signals on economic policy
making. A stronger economy would be good for Koizumi
whatever he plans to do. What is clear to some
politicians is that the only third party that could have
a chance at the premiership would be a party led by
Koizumi himself. That prospect would delight many of his
supporters and scare the pants off the LDP. Perhaps that
is what he wants.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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