Japan: Polls won't impact economic
recovery By Richard Hanson
"We should have offered further
explanations." - Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi on why the Democratic Party of Japan out-polled
the ruling Liberal Democrats on the issues in Sunday's
Upper House election.
TOKYO - A three-part
political post-mortem on Sunday's Upper House election:
First. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
"setback" for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and big
win for the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)
will have little impact on the current recovery pace of
the nation's economy. Why?
"The economy is
becoming separate from politics," says one Finance
Ministry source. Or as one economist put it: the
Japanese economy will not be influenced by the
government's policies. So the stock market looks okay.
This means that the economic and fiscal policy
minister, Heizo Takenaka, who won an Upper House berth
on his own, will remain in charge of Koizumi's
economic-reform drive. Takenaka, in fact, secured a seat
with the largest vote in the proportional-representation
category. This is seen as proof of support for the
Koizumi government's economic policies.
At the
worst, Koizumi may be forced to compromise with his
opponents on his main policy objectives, such as
postal-service privatization and pension-system reforms,
especially if opposition comes from his own party.
In other categories of policy, the prime
minister was judged more harshly. And things were more
upbeat on the opposition side.
"We will make a
new start in our bid for a change in government," DPJ
president Katsuya Okada said on Monday. This is the
surprise hero of the opposition, who took over the
leadership of the party barely a month before the
election campaign began after other senior party bosses
were disqualified.
Okada wants the LDP coalition
to scrap the pension-reform legislation railroaded
through the Diet (parliament) before the election and
open up debate on the prime minister's unpopular
decision to support participation of the Self-Defense
Forces in a multinational force in Iraq.
Two. Nobody, to everyone's relief, has to
resign from their job. That is certainly true in the
DPJ, which leaped into serious contention as the only
challenger in the new political order - a two (plus
junior partners) party system - in Nagatacho, the
heartland of Japan's central government. The DPJ
capitalized on its stunning LDP-threatening showing in
last November's Lower House general election by 177
seats, up 40 seats.
This time the DPJ won 50
Upper House seats, for a total of 82 seats in the
242-seat body. The LDP won only 49 seat, for a total of
115. This was enough to give the LDP sufficient seats to
control the Upper House, at least when you add the seats
held by the ruling party's coalition partner, the New
Komeito. The LDP and New Komeito, which won 11 seats on
Sunday, hold a 139-seat majority in the 242-seat Upper
House.
Being unemployed at this moment is a fate
no one wants. Why?
Three. For the next
two years, Koizumi is still in charge of when the next
job openings in the Diet will open up. As prime
minister, legally, he is the only one who can dissolve
the Lower House of parliament, where all of the
important decisions of state are made and voted on.
Koizumi already has said he will resign in
September 2006, when his current three-year term
expires. Bar a successful attempt to oust him through a
no-confidence vote, or a rebellion within the ruling
party, the prime minister will continue to set the
national agenda.
A
no-confidence motion is what the DPJ's Okada,
51 as of Wednesday, is already threatening. But whether
he will truly be able to master his own
party is still questionable. The withdrawal of former DPJ
president Naoto Kan left a large gap in the leadership.
That hole grew in an aborted attempt to make the onetime
LDP kingpin, Ichiro Ozawa, the party leader for the
election campaign.
Within the party, the most
stable senior official is Hirohisa Fujii, the party
secretary general. As a former finance minister, he is
about the best the party has in questions such as
pension funds, though there are any number of bright
younger lawmakers coming up through the party ranks.
For Koizumi, there are any number of unknowns to
ponder before parliament opens briefly on July 30 to
muster in the newly elected politicians. That will be
just about the time when the US presidential election
will be revving up into high gear.
Koizumi's
future at home will no doubt continue to be influenced
by developments in the White House, where in the past
three years he has bonded with President George W Bush.
One question has been, of course, whether Koizumi might
be able to hit it off with a Democratic president in the
United States. Senator John Kerry and his running mate
are not well known in Japan.
The question may be
whether some time in the next three years, a Democratic
prime minister will be meeting a Democratic president.
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