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Koizumi reshuffle brushes opposition
aside
By Richard Hanson
TOKYO
- An "Old-Guard" Japanese politician who 17 months ago
didn't like the looks of Junichiro Koizumi, a then movie
star idol-like new reform-minded prime minister, will
find no joy in Koizumi II.
On Monday, Koizumi
named his second cabinet, whose make-up indicates that
he intends to move forward with his program for reform,
brushing aside opposition from within his own party. For
the record, his first cabinet will go down in history as
the fourth longest since the end of World War II.
There are good reasons for anti-reform forces to
despair. Koizumi reckons that he now has a reasonable
chance that this cabinet will also have staying power.
One reason is that opponents of Koizumi's reform plan -
the word mission is perhaps more apt - are, if anything,
a waning force within his own party, the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP).
Hard-core anti-reform
factions in the LDP blocked key elements of his
legislative agenda during the long Diet (parliament)
session that ended this past summer July. His cabinet
managed to pass only parts of two major sets of bills,
one involving national health and the other the
controversial reform of the postal system.
What
they revolted against was the word "structural reform".
In layman's terms, this is the buzzword in Koizumi's
camp for a sweeping array of changes in how politics,
government and business ought to operate in Japan.
Koizumi call its "reform without sanctuary". His
supporters are taking up the call, if only out of
despair that change is perhaps the only way to breathe
new energy into Japan's economy.
Koizumi's
actions over the past week opened the first act of his
renewed strategy to revive his program. The first was a
pointed blow against the traditional sort of LDP
cronyism that went hand-in-hand with selecting a new
cabinet. Koizumi withdrew from public sight, holing up
over the weekend in his residence, refusing to take
pleas from the powerful factions that dominate the party
on favored cabinet appointments.
Before that, in
his role as president of the LDP, he reappointed the
incumbent top three party executives to another term.
The price for power was in effect a pledge to support
his reforms. There is little the party can do but fume.
When it came to the cabinet itself, Koizumi
rewarded loyalty by reappointing 11 incumbents among 17
ministers. He maintained the one-seat per supporting
coalition party member (one for the New Komeito and one
for the New Conservative Party, which together assure
the LDP of a voting majority in the parliament).
And his distribution of posts among the leading
LDP factions was frozen in place. The ministers of
defense and agriculture, who were enmeshed in
controversy in their ministries, were replaced with no
penalties exacted. All in all, Koizumi bolstered his
image as a reformer and a man who favors inclusive
politics.
There are six women in the new lineup,
compared with four at the start of the April 2001
cabinet. (The firing in a party row last January of the
controversial female former foreign minister Makiko
Tanaka cost Koizumi dearly in the support polls, which
plunged from over 80 percent to near 40 percent in a
string of scandals.) Koizumi has won points for keeping
the age of his appointments reasonably young. The
average age edged down a fraction to 60.7 years old.
By far the most notable change on Monday came on
the economic policy side. He sacked financial services
minister Hakuo Yanagisawa, who apparently balked at the
idea of using tax money to speed up the disposal of huge
amounts of bad loans held by banks. In an earlier
incarnation, championing public support for the banks,
which solved neither the bank nor the bad loan (known in
the jargon as non-performing loans) problems, burned
Yanagisawa.
Instead, the premier tapped for
reappointment his more malleable minister for economic
and fiscal policy, Heizo Takenaka, a 51-year-old
university professor, to also take up the minister of
financial services portfolio. Takenaka is a political
lightweight, but he agrees with the notion of injecting
funds into banks. The public best knows him for his
frequent appearances on Sunday morning television news
shows.
The banks that Koizumi would now support
have a history of lending profligacy so bad that failure
and jail time would be a more just reward in some cases.
But they, too, have powerful supporters.
Other
central figures in financial policy, notably the
80-year-old finance minister Masajuro Shiokawa, were
kept on board, offering some added stability. Shiokawa,
when he assumes his grandfatherly persona, is seen as
too much under the influence of his very persuasive
bureaucrats in the finance ministry. Officials there
have balked at economic stimulus measures that rely on
bank bailouts and inflating the economy through large
tax cuts. But the wily old man this past spring tied
them to the Koizumi program by freezing senior personnel
rotations. So they, too, are on board, like it or not,
for Koizumi II.
Koizumi's own support for some
forms of public bailout for the bank problem is very
much part and parcel of securing other support needed
from what has become in recent months the most
important, and best organized, support constituency on
his political radar. This is none other than big
business - especially those larger enterprises that have
seen their competitive edge deteriorate under
ineffective economic/political management in recent
years.
The actual problem with many businesses
may be home-grown, and well deserved, but the current
generation of business leaders is beginning to realize
that the past decade of political deadlock is no longer
tolerable for Japan's future. Ironically, the leadership
factions of the LDP opposed to Koizumi do so in large
part because he threatens relations with the LDP's
traditional supporters - construction and other sectors
weaned on huge public works expenditures. They thwarted
some of Koizumi's plans this earlier in the year.
That spurred big business into action.
Since mid-summer, the heads of the three most
powerful business organizations have lined up as
supporters of Koizumi. The spearhead has been the Nippon
Keidanren, also known as the Japan Business Federation.
The chairman of this newly reorganized body, Hiroshi
Okuda (also chairman of Toyota Motor), has set in motion
activities that should support Koizumi's Cabinet in
future battles with anti-reform forces in the LDP.
What also helps is Koizumi reaping support in
the popularity polls from his surprise visit to North
Korea, which has started a process that may lead to
normalization of relations between Japan and that
heavily armed and poverty stricken nearby nation. So
going into the cabinet reshuffle, Koizumi already a leg
up, with his support rating reaching the 60 percent
mark. That is far from the 87 percent support rating he
received 17 months ago when launching his first cabinet,
when his support came in large part from women.
This time a more seasoned Koizumi II seems to
have caught the attention of his audience for the
content of his programs, rather than for unreliable
advance billings.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co,
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