TOKYO
- Call it the Ox-Walk Showdown or the Pension Session.
Either way, when the final gavel fell Wednesday evening
on the 159th ordinary session of the Japanese Diet
(parliament), a lot politicians were glad to see it end.
All eyes are now clearly focused on the upcoming
election of half of the members in the 242-seat Upper
House, scheduled for Sunday, July 11.
What began
150 days ago with a prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi,
riding reasonably high in the saddle - a nervous
cowboy's tip of the hat to George W Bush - turned out to
be a rough slog for politicians of all ilks. Koizumi
masterminded his first major general election in
November, although the feisty and newly energized main
opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), made a
strong enough showing to enable pundits to hail the
arrival of "two-party" politics.
In one sense
that was true viewed from both sides.
Step back
to last September and the Liberal Democratic Party's own
internal election. Koizumi virtually destroyed the
powerful interests of the personal faction within the
LDP, demanding support for himself. He got it, and went
on to win the November fight. Sure, the LDP was all the
more beholden to its coalition partner, the New Komeito,
whose religious backer got out the local vote for the
LDP.
The DPJ, however, also gained a healthy
number of seats, after its leadership began to lead
under one of its founders, Naoto Kan, and a recent
recruitment of the former LDP kingmaker Ichiro Ozawa.
For the first time, the LDP had a serious challenger.
All that was before the outbreak of a virtual
epidemic of disclosures that very large numbers of
politicians of all stripes, who were fiercely debating
on the Diet floor the future of Japan government
pension, were themselves lax in paying into the
obligatory pension system. This all started, it seemed,
with the nice-looking actress hired to be on the poster
promoting the pension plans.
She did not pay.
Neither, it turned out, did chief cabinet secretary
Yasuo Fukuda, son of a prime minister and close
companion to Prime Minister Koizumi (see Japan's top pension scofflaw
resigns, May 8. Quickly it was clear that
politicians in droves failed at some time in their lives
to pay the pension fees. Among politicians a handful
resigned their posts, including DPJ leader Kan, who had
lashed out perhaps too strongly against other sinners.
That is why the DJP will be led in the Upper House
election by a youngish Katsuya Okada, a former civil
servant who entered politics in the early 1970s (see Japan's opposition leader 'for a new
age', May 21). All in all, from a
political strategist's point of view the LDP and the DPJ
are fairly evenly matched for the coming election. In
fact, both Koizumi and Okada have set out very modest,
indeed almost identical, numbers of seats they want to
win.
That is more surprising on Koizumi's side,
since he made his first real contribution to the LDP
soon after he was elected in April 2001 with a winning
performance in the Upper House election three years ago.
Koizumi had captured the interest of the public
at large, especially the female portion. His support
polls stayed over 80% until he became entangled in the
dirty business of politics, but it remains around 50% in
most polls.
This was at least partly because he
advocated a rather vague but appealing call for
"structural reform" of corrupt governmental bodies and
the private sector, which was still in the grip of a
dull economy. Koizumi also appealed directly to people
in novel ways, such as a very popular e-mail newsletter
called "Lion Heart".
When in doubt, Koizumi
speaks directly to the people over television. On
Friday, he is scheduled to make just such a presentation
in the form of a live press conference. In the past, the
prime minister has swayed people to accept Japan's
willingness to support US President Bush's war on Iraq.
Later, that extended to the deployment of troops for
"humanitarian" purposes. So far, none of the several
hundred Self-Defense Forces in Iraq have been killed.
Even stomach aches are big news. Indeed, there has been
little strong opposition per se to having the troops
there.
That may be changing.
Koizumi
generally gets high marks for handling delicate
negotiations to normalize relations with Japan's
dangerous neighbor, North Korea. In May, he made his
second trip to North Korea to meet with its leader and
secure the passage to Japan of a number of relatives
Japanese who were abducted as long ago as the 1970s.
The prime minister, however, is on thinner ice
when talking about a change in the role of the
Self-Defense Forces in Iraq as part of a multinational
force to be formed as the country resumes nominal
control over itself. That is an issue that Koizumi can
probably handle. He is suffering from Iraq syndrome -
once in you are have to live with it, and a flow of bad
news.
Koizumi got good reviews last week at the
Group of Eight (G8) summit in the US from Bush for
saying Japan will sign up for a multinational force in
Iraq, while telling the home crowd the Self-Defense
Forces will still be independent and "humanitarian".
Koizumi did pass a package of military bills that, among
other things, make it legal to ban ships from unfriendly
countries (North Korea). That calms the right wing of
the ruling Liberal Democrats, and is probably fine with
most voters.
But as the Diet session came to an
end, it was clear that he might run into trouble over
money issues - namely, the government pension plans that
he rammed through parliament in the last days of the
session on the strength of his majority of votes.
Moreover, Koizumi isn't given all that much credit for
the economic growth now showing up in the statistics.
People still worry about money, according to a recent
Bank of Japan opinion survey.
This is one reason
that the opposition has turned to old-fashioned tactics
in the Diet, such as the Ox-Walk, in slowing down the
wheels of democracy (literally, they walk slowly to the
ballot box). This tactic has been used twice during this
session.
As may be the case for Bush in the
United States, the lack of a bounce from the economic
recovery under way could hurt. Koizumi's opposition is
making the most of the money issue on voter minds.
Koizumi did pass the pension plans to raise
premiums, while the opposition ox-walked again this
week. No matter how you look at it, any government
increase in fees is just like raising taxes.
Koizumi, after pledging no tax rises since 2001,
may have walked the wrong walk.
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