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Koizumi ready to storm
ahead
By Richard Hanson
TOKYO
- Yep, there's only one guy to blame.
Koizumi.
First name Junichiro. Occupation: prime minister.
Next week, if all goes his way, he'll be the
shortish guy, in morning dress with shaggy hair,
front-and-center in the picture commemorating the start
of his third cabinet. This assumes, of course, that
lightning doesn't strike as votes are counted in the
ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential
election on Saturday.
Lightning is no idle
threat. In a recent flash electric storm, an errant
lightning bolt struck the venerable Diet Building, home
of the parliament in Nagatacho, causing considerable
damage.
No bunco: The guy who put him there is
himself!
Okay, he will have had a little help.
First of all, a majority of LDP members (most important,
Diet members) have to vote for him. But none of the
other three candidates have a chance. Influential people
outside of the party also back Koizumi, most prominently
business leaders. His popularity with middle-age women
is said to be still strong, despite an old wound from
when he fired a female foreign minister. But the truth
is that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, 61, has almost
single-handedly written a new chapter in the history of
Japanese party politics in the past few weeks. He did
that by seeking election to a full three-year term as
president of the traditionally faction-driven Liberal
Democrats by relegating party factions to the sidelines.
They were, well, ignored - unless it was to pledge
support to the prime minister.
This was out of
principle. Don't get it wrong. All the other things that
move all politicians motivate the prime minister: mainly
getting elected. He is just an anomaly in the LDP. What
scares some politicians is that Koizumi may be
dangerously upsetting norms that result, even encourage,
opaque policy making and corruption. There is still a
lot of that in Japan. This may even send a message to
developing countries facing elections where money
politics distort and corrupt government - such the as
the United States.
To name a few highlights of
Koizumi's battle for re-election:
No
money. Koizumi had about 43 million yen (US$373,000)
in what the Asahi Shimbun called his "war chest". His
most earnest opponent, Shizuka Kamei (of the small,
conservative Eto-Kamei faction), accumulated 200 million
yen. LDP politicians have been chastened by the demise
last year of two of the party's biggest fundraisers, one
of which, Muneo Suzuki, was recently released on bail
after more than a year in jail.
Virtual
faction. The prime minister is famous for not having
a personal faction, therefore little reason to raise
money to support its members. Koizumi grew up as the bag
carrier in the faction of the late former prime minister
Takeo Fukuda, whose son Yasuo Fukuda has been chief
cabinet secretary since the first Koizumi cabinet (April
2001). Koizumi has split the vote in the biggest
faction, named after former prime minister (and Koizumi
nemesis) Ryutaro Hashimoto. This is a tactic used by
Ieyasu Tokugawa defeating his enemies in 1600, thus
launching a 265-year reign. Koizumi may have parleyed
some policy favors to the party's "mainstream" for
support, or driven a nail into its heart (see Koizumi and the challenge of
conformity, September 8).
Policy. Leave this blank. Koizumi's
domestic policy agenda is "reform" without raising the
consumption tax - the latter, a past prime
minister-killer. For two-and-a-half years (he was
selected LDP president in April 2001), Koizumi's staple
issues have been reform/privatization of such
pork-barrel, vested-interest protected things as the
postal system and public road building, and a nod to
agriculture reform. Japan's foreign policy boils down to
closure on the North Korean kidnappings/nuclear weapons
crises, while supporting US President George W Bush in
his Iraqi miasma.
The next election. The
prime minister needs to flesh out a reasonably balanced
cabinet in the next couple days. This is tricky. Cabinet
officers like the prestige of the job, but serving cuts
into campaign time to get re-elected. When Koizumi (who
has a safe seat) calls a general election (Lower House),
say in November, government will grind to a halt. The
Upper House election is mandated next summer. Koizumi's
current popular-support ratings have risen in recent
weeks, above 60 percent in some polls. The fear is that
the prime minister's good-looking numbers will not
translate into guaranteed wins for LDP candidates in the
first election in over three years. More to the point: A
newly energized lead opposition Democratic Party of
Japan (DPJ) is in town. This summer, the handsome DPJ
president, Naoto Kan, engineered a merger to bring an
old LDP political pro, Ichiro Ozawa, into the party.
And then there are the issues, which can best be
lumped together as ...
The economy.
Koizumi's luck may hold. The stock market is up
(foreigners have been buyers of shares for 22 weeks in a
row). Economic growth figures are rising moderately (in
April-June, the gross domestic product number was
running at a 3.9 percent annual pace). And Osaka's
baseball wonder team, the Hanshin Tigers, has won the
Central League pennant for the first time in 18 long
years (when Japan was starting to bubble into serious
economic disaster). This helps consumers loosen the
purse strings a bit. Symbolically, Koizumi took the
Tigers victory to heart, having lost battles of his own.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange's bank index is up 74 percent
since April 28, when the government bailed out the
Osaka-based Resona banking group, the nation's
fifth-largest.
This may help the case for
retaining Finance and Economic Minister Heizo Takenaka
(a non-politician from academe who launched a radical
bank-rescue plan a year ago) retain a cabinet seat. He
is disliked among some faction members and Koizumi has
been urged to dump him, as well as his current foreign
minister and education, science and technology minister
(both female, and from the private sector) to make room
for more LDP regulars. (Koizumi is also obliged to
allocate seats to the LDP's coalition partners, the New
Komeito and the New Conservative Party.)
Hardcore opponents of Koizumi's ways have had
their own reactions. The most dramatic came last week as
the party election campaign was officially engaged just
after the Diet Building was hit by lightning. The
building's distinctive central tower was struck and
large pieces of granite stone fell off. The incident
took place just before Hiromu Nonaka, 78, former LDP
secretary general, who has been one of the most powerful
among party stalwarts, announced his retirement from
politics and his seat in the Lower House after 20 years
as an party insider.
"I took the thunderbolt as
a sign that late Noboru Takeshita [former prime minister
who was Nonaka's boss and close mentor] is angry at the
immoral conduct of many LDP politicians," Nonaka
declared. He was not referring to Koizumi directly, but
considered his policies as such. (Actually, Takeshita
was forced to resign - along with a lot of other people
- as prime minister in a late-1980s money scandal.)
The prime minister had his own rebuttal just as
the Hanshin Tigers were about to clinch their pennant
victory in Osaka.
"When Nonaka [and others] say
that Japan would be better off if Koizumi were to step
down, I become discouraged," he said, according to the
Asahi Shimbun. "But the Hanshin Tigers hung in there
even when they could not get out of their losing streak.
I also hung in there to advance structural reform even
though my opponents kept criticizing me.
"At
long last, I can see bright signs ahead of me."
So don't blame anyone one else if the next
cabinet is also named Koizumi.
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
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