Koizumi's third cabinet could be the
charm By Richard Hanson
TOKYO
- There's a saying in Japan that the third time is
decisive - and maybe this time it will also be the charm
when it comes to reform. That old saying is one that
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, 62, probably had in
mind this week as he carried out his third cabinet
reshuffle, an annual one-man, autumn show since sweeping
into office on a populist reformer's wave in April 2001.
Depending on how you view Koizumi, the prime
minister on Monday either implemented a stroke of
political genius and visionary reform or appointed his
loyal associates in an effort to shore up his legacy and
turn significant progress into positive achievements.
Some say Koizumi has used this latest,
far-reaching shakeup to firm up his power in order to
push ahead the privatization of the nation's highly
politicized postal system and enact other broad
structural reforms. These are mostly completed reform
tasks, such as cleaning up blatant pork-barrel
boondoggles like building highways and bridges.
Another view is that on Monday Koizumi filled
his new cabinet with what one newspaper described as
associates and unassuming individuals in an apparent
attempt to leave behind a "legacy" in postal
privatization and foreign policy - areas where the prime
minister has made great strides, but not always scored
clear-cut successes.
After a lackluster showing
last July in a major national election for the Upper
House of the Diet (parliament), Koizumi has been sharply
criticized for his handling of such pocketbook items as
support for reforming the national pension system (to
which a number of politicians, including Koizumi, were
delinquent in past payments).
So Koizumi draped
himself in his trademark drive as the mail-system
reformer.
"We have finally reached the core base
of reform that is postal privatization," Koizumi said
after the official cabinet attestation (swearing-in)
ceremony at the Imperial Palace. "I have reshuffled the
cabinet to push through that reform." The footnote is
that Koizumi has already said this will be his last
administration, when his term as president of the
governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) expires in
2006.
In effect, the argument goes, Koizumi
wants to be a lame duck and eat it too.
Others
say the prime minister's record and the choices that he
made in selecting this cabinet indicate that the new
cabinet could turn out to be the most active and
effective group in a long time. With no major
impediments in sight, the cabinet looks ready to go to
work.
The standard 18-member cabinet, including
the prime minister, has 11 new members, including
several who have never served in a cabinet. Moreover,
Koizumi was able to pick and choose his team from a
considerable talent pool within the ruling party,
including some people who were bitter opponents a couple
of years ago when the anti-Koizumi forces stymied his
efforts at structural reform. But help was on the way.
In the darkest days of the early summer of 2002,
the prime minister received a strong personal boost from
big business and the Japan Business Federation
(Keidanren). Koizumi went on to a surprise
political breakthrough with Japan's threatening neighbor
in North Korea in September of that year, making a
historic trip to Pyongyang and opening talks aimed at
normalizing relations.
That has been a rocky
road. But Koizumi benefited from these diplomatic
breakthroughs in gaining support for Japan's current
role in Iraq, where it has sent a humanitarian
contingent of the Self-Defense Forces at the request of
the United States. So far, Koizumi's standing staunchly
behind US President George W Bush has not hurt him in
the polls.
Koizumi's domestic agenda is a clear
priority. He dubbed the reshuffled government "the
cabinet to realize postal privatization".
Symbolic of that undertaking, on Monday Koizumi
appointed his ace economic and financial whiz, Heizo
Takenaka, 53, to rule over a newly created cabinet post
of state minister of postal reform and privatization.
Takenaka retained the economic and fiscal policy
portfolio. But Koizumi gave the post of minister for
financial affairs (banks, brokers and such) to a rising
young star, Tatsuya Ito, 43, a member of the large
faction that opposes the prime minister.
The
increasingly well regarded Chief Cabinet Secretary
Hiroyuki Hosoda and Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki
were reappointed, to general satisfaction. Taro Aso, 64,
was also kept on as the powerful minister of public
management.
Koizumi retired the foreign
minister, a non-politician who was appointed after an
early appointee, Makiko Tanaka, was fired. The new
foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, is a loyal Koizumi
supporter who ran the LDP's election bureau over the
last three elections. Machimura was formerly an official
with the defunct ministry of international trade and
industry (MITI). A major goal for Koizumi is obtaining a
permanent seat for Japan on the UN Security Council, and
the new foreign minister will be his point-man in the
campaign.
Personal loyalties again counted high.
Koizumi appointed a close friend, former LDP vice
president Taku Yamasaki, who lost his seat in the Lower
House in the general election last November. His job
will be personal adviser on affairs involving the
planned realignment of US forces in Japan.
Also
appointed from among the younger generation of the party
was Yasufumi Tanahashi, 41, the new minister in charge
of science, technology and food-safety affairs. The new
cabinet also includes two women: Justice Minister Chieko
Nono, 68, an Upper House member of the LDP, and Yuriko
Koike, who retained the post of environment minister
concurrent with her role as minister in charge of
affairs relating to Okinawa prefecture and the
territorial issues over the disputed islands held by
Russia off eastern Hokkaido.
There are some new
and old faces. Yoshinori Ono, 68, an LDP Upper House
legislator, was named head of the Defense Agency, after
a career as a tax expert. Yoshinobu Shimamura, 70, who
returned to the Lower House seat as an LDP member last
November, was named minister of agriculture, forestry
and fisheries. His district is downtown Tokyo. A former
Finance Ministry official, Yoshitaka Murata, 60, a Lower
House LDP lawmaker, was named chairman of the National
Public Safety Commission.
Eleven of the
reshuffled cabinet members are newly appointed,
including Nariaki Nakayama, 61, a Lower House member of
the LDP, now minister of education, science and
technology, and Kazuo Kitagawa, the policy chief of
LDP's coalition partner New Komeito, now minister of
construction and transport.
On the ruling LDP
hierarchy, the prime minister, who also is party
president, used his third cabinet reshuffle to
rehabilitate a colorful former agriculture minister,
Tsutomu Takebe, to replace Shinzo Abe as secretary
general of the LDP. Takebe is known as a staunch
advocate of postal privatization and the prime
minister's other structural reform initiatives. (He was
forced to resign a cabinet post two years ago in a
scandal involving his staff.) The new LDP executive
lineup also includes a former international trade and
industry minister Kaoru Eosin, who succeeds Fukushima
Nukaga (a key member of the largest faction in the
party) as chairman of the LDP's decision-making Policy
Research Council; Fumio Kyuma, acting secretary general
of the LDP, takes over from Mitsuo Horiuchi as head of
the LDP General Council.
This left pundits
speculating over Shinzo Abe's new lesser role as an
acting secretary general of the LDP. Abe is widely
touted as a future prime minister, a post that his
famous grandfather Nobusuke Kishi held in the early
postwar period, and that his late father, former foreign
minister Shintaro Abe, sought to hold.
Abe's
case also sheds light on one of the mostly unspoken
questions of politics and ideology in Koizumi Cabinet
III. Some more liberal members of the LDP are alarmed by
what can be described as a rightist view on the part of
Shinzo Abe, whose home base of Yamaguchi prefecture on
the southern tip of the main island of Honshu is
generally conservative.
Abe is outspoken about
the threat of North Korea and is generally
anti-communist, for example. Prime Minister Koizumi has
a solid conservative streak, with his own home base in
Yokosuka, not far from Tokyo and the headquarters for
much of Japan's uniformed military forces, as well as
the US 7th Fleet.
This in part explains why the
prime minister has continued to anger China, and other
victims of Imperial Japan's wartime aggressions, by
visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where the spirits of
Japan's modern war dead (along with several World War II
Class A war criminals) are looked after. Many people are
trying to persuade Koizumi to change because of the
emergence in China of somewhat more liberal leaders.
Prime Minister Koizumi has proved that he
possesses deep insight into how to manage the Liberal
Democratic Party, which bodes well for the chances of
his reforms of the postal system during the lifetime of
this cabinet. Three chances will have to suffice.
Richard Hanson, veteran correspondent
and expert on the Japanese economy, finance and
politics, is the author of Money Lords: The Pride
and Folly of Japan's Finance Ministry Elites.
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