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KOIZUMI ON THE
HUSTINGS
Kan he or can't he?
By Richard Hanson
In this series:
The ghosts of elections
past
Politics in the
paddies
Mad cows and LDP
politics
TOKYO -
Nobody likes to eat crow. But if Japan's Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi finds himself out of the warmth of
the Official Residence after November 9, he'll have
to swallow the patronizing advice he tossed just a
little over a year ago to his then down-in-the gutter main
political opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan
(DPJ).
In September 2002, the DPJ was indeed a
mess. The reincarnated namesake of the Democratic Party
that created the coalition that formed the Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955 was split into pieces. A
weak party president, Yukio Hatoyama, grandson of a
former prime minister and LDP founder, won re-election
by a bitter 12-vote margin. He defeated a dispirited
Naoto Kan, also a party co-founder. This was a low point
for the party. (Not long after Hatoyama would resign,
after trying to ally on his own with a small party run
by an unpopular ex-LDP strongman, Ichiro Ozawa - the man
who tried to destroy the LDP. Kan took over at that dark
moment. Earlier this summer, Kan engineered a stunning
"merger" with Ozawa and his Liberal Party. More on that
later.)
So there was the prime minister offering
advice. "Present the nation with a constructive policy
platform," he said. "They should say, 'This is what we
will do if we take over the government'." Well, a year
later, they did. So early this week, when Naoto Kan, 56,
picked up the campaign microphone in front of the Oji
Station in the working class neighborhood of Kita Ward
in Tokyo - a fast train ride to the Diet (parliament) in
Nagatacho - he spoke to support the local candidate with
relish about the detailed policies and reforms, a
manifesto that the re-born Democrats would bring to
governing the nation.
Kan mocked the platform of
Koizumi's own LDP party, which in September had elected
him overwhelmingly to a three-year term as party
president. "Koizumi is more interested in beating
records for how he can stay in office, rather than
reforms," Kan shouted into the microphone. In another
loaded jab, the DPJ's Kan received applause for his
party's promise to eliminate the steep highway tolls
(outside big cities) that the government charges that
are now the center of fierce political controversy.
Koizumi himself has opposed the "pork barrel" highway
programs that have contributed to Japan's huge public
debt. But his party has fiercely pushed road building
for decades. There are hints that the DPJ will be
exposing more road-related scandals as the campaign
heats up. "If you want to have toll-free roads, vote for
the Democratic Party of Japan," he told the crowd. That
is a popular notion throughout rural Japan, where the
LDP has built roads and bridges that are little used
because of expensive tolls.
Kan is also pushing
the use of the national consumption tax (now 5 percent)
to fund Japan's overburdened public pension schemes,
even if it has to be raised to do so. This has been
fairly well received. There is one catch to all these
visions: Will Koizumi and the LDP lose?
This is
where a manifesto offers no answers. First, some of the
reasons that Kan's DPJ has a reasonable shot at winning.
The obvious point is that this is the first time in
recent political history that there are national parties
that are appealing to the same broad spectrum of the
electorate.
One complaint is that the DPJ and
the LDP are virtually mirror images of each other. The
differences come in cracks rather than seismic fissures.
This is natural. The DPJ's checkered history is shorter
than that of the LDP, but it was formed by a motley
group of LDP and other party members whose main common
interest was dislike of the LDP.
The truth is
that both parties are based on personal factions. Both
Koizumi and Kan have tried to smooth out those factions,
with mixed success. Policy-wise, both parties share a
broad consensus - with extreme wings sprinkled in.
The most prominent disagreements at the moment
are over issues such as whether to send Self Defense
Forces to Iraq. That was resolved by the passage of a
law before the Lower House of the Diet was dissolved,
leading to the election. The LDP and its coalition with
the smallish New Komeito and New Conservative Party
voted for sending troops. The DPJ voted against. Koizumi
then was able to drag his feet on sending troops because
of the ongoing chaos in Iraq.
What has helped
level the playing field, however, is the embracing of
"personality" politics, rather than policy politics.
Within the LDP, Koizumi demonstrated that by sheer force
of his popular image (and the backing of important
lobbies like big business) there were no other LDP
members who could even challenge him seriously for
leadership.
Naoto Kan had to go outside the
party to bring in a strong personality. That came in the
form of Ichiro Ozawa. Within the DPJ there are many who
may dislike Ozawa - who sold out the LDP in an effort to
create a new party in 1993-94 - but there is no one who
can command the respect others have for his abilities as
a political operator.
"Ozawa has weight," as one
DPJ official put it. Ozawa was also rotting away in the
obscurity of his small Liberal Party. What Kan saw in
Ozawa was an opportunity to give party the constantly
bickering members of the party a kick in a couple
sensitive parts of the anatomy. The merger also added an
important infusion of bodies. On the one hand, Kan was
smart enough to recognize that the ideals of the party
were rather useless if they were doomed to be the
opposition. Ozawa's vision is still of a two-party
system, which somehow would make Japan more "normal" - a
word he used as he tried to break up the LDP in the
early 1990s. It is mostly serendipity that these ideas
are being tested on November 9.
In the event of
some form of a DPJ victory, Koizumi says that the LDP
will accept being an opposition party as long as it is
as part of the current coalition that it controls. For
the DPJ, there are few illusions about a winning
majority. The Japan Communist Party is the only other
party that is capable of fielding enough candidates to
take over the government.
So the question is
still: can Koizumi lose? If it was only a matter of the
prime minister's charisma, the answer is probably no.
The popularity polls show that Koizumi's personal poll
is slipping, while the LDP is holding its own. A major
scandal could change that. A likely result will be just
about the status quo, which is not bad. To carry out his
personal reform agenda, Koizumi just needs to be
re-elected prime minister for another three years. (LDP
rules also allow only two three-year terms as party
president.) On that score, the DPJ's Kan is right in
pointing out the conflict between one's place in history
and raising the consumption tax (which Koizumi opposes).
So what about the other question: how can Kan
win? About the only way would be for the LDP's coalition
to fail to win a solid majority in the general election.
That puts things into play, something that people like
Ozawa understand. Kan is more reticent, in public, about
who he would seek alliances with.
When asked
about a coalition, say, with the Japan Communist Party,
Kan says that the DPJ "would not form a cabinet with a
communist cabinet member". He would, of course, form
alliances with just about anyone else.
Out on
the hustings, DPJ candidates seem to have fewer qualms
about such things. "We would form a coalition with the
Communist Party," says the campaign manager of the
candidate in Kita Ward, whom Kan was supporting in his
stump speech. And Kan's careful statements don't rule
out anyone if they are willing to vote him in as prime
minister.
That is when Koizumi's advice to the
Democrats about preparing to "take over the government"
may come back to haunt.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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