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Assassins and
convicts
By J Sean Curtin
As
the battle for Japan's crucial September
11 Lower House election intensifies, the outcome
remains unclear. While opinion polls give the
long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a
strong lead over the Democratic Party of Japan
(DPJ) and other rivals, this may not translate
into seats because serious splits within the LDP
are dividing its vote.
Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi's strategy of running official
LDP candidates against dissident LDP lawmakers, a
tactic the media has dubbed the "assassins"
policy, makes the result unpredictable.
Complicating matters is the emergence of three new
political parties, founded by disgruntled LDP
heavyweights, plus several high profile convicted
former lawmakers seeking a comeback in key LDP
constituencies. If the total seats won by the LDP
and its DPJ challenger are close, then Japan's
political future may well rest on the electoral
fortunes of the "assassins" and ex-cons.
Internal LDP strife stems from deep
divisions over Koizumi's long-cherished postal
privatization project, which 37 Lower House LDP
rebels voted against and their Upper House allies
blocked. Koizumi has made the postal issue the
litmus test for reform and seeks to eliminate all
LDP Lower House members who opposed it, a move
that has effectively split the party, leading to
the formation of new parties and opening the door
for potential opposition gains.
It is hard
to see how just the single issue of postal
privatization, which so far has not excited the
public, can sustain the LDP through a tough
campaign, and in the final few weeks before the
poll, this may lose it vital momentum.
In
a Japanese general election, 300 constituencies
are directly elected and a further 180 are decided
in proportional regional blocks.
If, as
many predict, the election race between the LDP
and the DPJ tightens up, the final outcome could
hinge on just few key regional battlegrounds, such
as the one in the northern territory of Hokkaido.
In the 2003 general election, the LDP and DPJ were
fairly evenly matched in several swing Hokkaido
single-seat constituencies, while the DPJ held an
advantage in the Hokkaido proportional block.
However, as in other prefectures, local
LDP divisions over Koizumi's "assassins" policy
have given the DPJ a real chance of capturing
marginal constituencies and gaining additional
proportional seats. The Hokkaido picture has been
further complicated by a convicted former LDP
lawmaker who has set up a new regional party,
which is siphoning off some of the LDP core
support.
Ex-con joins key
battleground
The recently formed
Hokkaido-based New Party Mother Earth (Shinto
Daichi) is headed by convicted bribe-taker and
former LDP deputy chief cabinet secretary Muneo
Suzuki, who is currently out on bail. Despite his
criminal record, Suzuki retains a strong local
support base as well as a formidable
vote-gathering machine.
In last year's
House of Councilors poll, Suzuki alone garnered
nearly 480,000 votes, which though it was not
quite enough to win him a seat in the Upper House,
would be enough to secure him a Lower House seat
in the region's proportional block.
Suzuki
has also recruited several candidates with good
voter appeal to his banner, including former
Olympic ski-jumper Masahiro Akimoto, and the
energetic Kaori Tahara, a descendent of Hokkaido's
indigenous Ainu people. With the new party
fielding credible candidates in a number of
constituencies, the LDP may well see its overall
Hokkaido-wide vote go down, something that will
eat into its proportional votes and could cost it
seats.
Suzuki does not hide his disdain
for Koizumi or his opposition to postal
privatization, so any inroads made by his party
will hurt the prime minister.
The LDP's
local Hokkaido chapter is worried it will lose
vital seats, and one LDP staffer, who did not wish
to be identified, told Asia Times Online: "This is
going to be a tough election for us. Many of our
supporters feel unhappy about Koizumi flying in an
assassin, and Suzuki's group is also eroding our
support base. We could lose anywhere from two to
four seats."
Were the LDP to suffer such
losses in this key region, along with one or two
other battleground prefectures, it could tip the
balance against Koizumi and leave him short of a
majority.
Koizumi tried to pressurize
Seiko Hashimoto, a well-known former Olympic
athlete and chairwoman of the LDP's Hokkaido
chapter, to stand as an "assassin", but she
refused. No prominent figure in the local chapter
wanted to liquidate LDP postal rebel Takafumi
Yamashita, forcing Koizumi to fly in Yukari
Iijima, a former education superintendent from the
remote Pacific island territory of Aogashima.
Yamashita and Iijima will square off in
the Hokkaido number 10 single-seat district, which
Yamashita lost to the DPJ by about 15,000 votes in
the 2003 poll. Yamashita was elected in the
proportional block, but with two rival LDP
candidates standing this time, the LDP is certain
to split its vote and weaken its position in the
proportional section.
This kind of
vote-dissipating scenario is set to be replicated
in rebel constituencies around the country and
could cost the LDP dearly, not only in directly
elected lawmakers but also in the 180 proportional
seats.
The internally weakened Hokkaido
LDP, just like other split LDP chapters
nationwide, may also lose several closely fought
single-seat constitutes to the DPJ. The Hokkaido
number six constituency, which the LDP's Hiroshi
Imazu last time took from the DPJ by only 614
votes, looks especially vulnerable, as does the
Hokkaido number five constituency of Foreign
Minister Nobutaka Machimura, which he held by
8,843 votes.
Keiko Yamauchi, a former
Social Democratic Party lawmaker from Hokkaido and
current candidate, told Asia Times Online,
"Arguments about the assassin and jailbird are
ripping the LDP apart. It's significantly weakened
and makes me feel confident about our prospects."
Ex-cons and new parties
It is
not just in Hokkaido that convicted former
lawmakers are influencing the electoral arithmetic
in close races. The candidacy of former Social
Democratic Party lawmaker Kiyomi Tsujimoto in
Osaka number 10 district now makes the seat too
close to call. Tsujimoto was forced to give up her
seat in 2002 after it was discovered she misused
government-paid salaries for her secretaries, an
offence for which she received a suspended prison
term in February 2004.
Former LDP
construction minister Kishiro Nakamura, who lost
his diet seat because of his conviction in a
bid-rigging scandal, will pose a tough challenge
to the LDP in the Ibaraki number seven seat.
Nakamura lost his seat when he was jailed in 2003
after unsuccessfully appealing a guilty verdict.
Since his release from prison in June 2004, he has
been rebuilding a strong local support base.
Besides the ex-con threat, a more
significant thorn in the LDP side is a new party
called The People's New Party (PNP - Kokumin
Shinto) hastily founded by three LDP Lower House
rebels, former Lower House speaker Tamisuke
Watanuki, former LDP policy research council chair
Shizuka Kamei and former National Land Agency
director general Hisaoki Kamei and two supporters
from the Upper House. The trio formed the party to
help them fight off the assassins.
On
Sunday, an additional three LDP rebels, Koki
Kobayashi, Makoto Taki and Takashi Aoyama, along
with an Upper House lawmaker, Hiroyuki Arai, and
the flamboyant governor of Nagano Prefecture,
Yasuo Tanaka, launched another new political party
called Nippon, meaning Japan. The party, headed by
Tanaka, aims to change central government
bureaucracy and will work with other parties that
hold the same goals.
Under current
electoral rules, it is advantageous to form an
authorized political party as it allows its
members to run in both a single-seat constituency
and the proportional representation block,
maximizing their chances of being elected if they
fail to win in single-seat constituencies. Being
in a party also allows its members to appear in
campaign broadcasts and greatly increases their
national profile.
Koizumi has already
dispatched "assassins" to deal with the PNP,
Nippon and all 33 rebels who are standing for
reelection, making especially sure that the most
capable "hitmen" are assigned to take out his most
bitter enemies. This tactic has set the scene for
the most closely watched contest in the country.
Koizumi's most effective LDP foe, Shizuka
Kamei, has been pitted against Takafumi Horie, a
32-year-old well-known entrepreneur who is
president of Livedoor Internet and technology
company. Horie will run as an independent with LDP
backing, in Kamei's Hiroshima number six
constituency. The confrontation has created a
media frenzy, and the resulting bloodbath may hand
victory to the DPJ. Its candidate, the modest
sounding Koji Sato, can hardly believe his luck.
Opposition capitalizes
The DPJ
has been capitalizing on the split and one of its
key election strategies is to concentrate its
resources on rebel constituencies where the LDP
will effectively be battling itself. The DPJ
leader, Katsuya Okada, has already visited several
of the target seats, jokingly telling voters, "The
DPJ is offering a fresh start and real choice, all
the LDP is asking you to do is pick from the LDP
A-list or LDP B-list."
There is no doubt
that effectively pitting two LDP candidates
against each other runs a high risk of them
eliminating each other and handing a default
victory to the DPJ. It is difficult to fathom
whether Koizumi intended this to occur or whether
he thought the rebels would quit once official LDP
candidates where fielded against them.
Koizumi's no-mercy purge of LDP rebels has
so far only produced four preelection scalps, but
created the worst LDP split since 1993 when the
party last lost power. The first rebel to quit was
a tearful Kazuko Nose, who broke down on national
TV blaming Koizumi for her political demise.
Others were less emotional, former National Public
Safety Commission chairman Jin Murai said he
wanted to leave political life and former posts
and telecommunications minister Eita Yashiro was
equally reserved. Akihiko Kumashiro, of the
Okayama number two district, quit when Koizumi
backed Okayama mayor Seiji Hagiwara against him.
Opportunistically Kumashiro decided to run for the
vacant Okayama mayor post instead.
Of the
remaining 33 LDP Lower House rebels, only three
have joined the PNP, with another three going to
Nippon, while 20 are standing firm as
independents. These include LDP heavyweights like
former economy minister Takeo Hiranuma, former
posts minister Seiko Noda, former transport
minister Takao Fujii and former LDP general
council chairman Mitsuo Horiuchi.
Their
decision not to join the PNP or Nippon but stand
as independents indicates that they are confident
of reelection, something that will cause Koizumi
an extremely nasty post-election headache if it
happens, especially if the assassins fail to win
more than a handful of seats and the ex-cons stage
a comeback.
J Sean Curtin is a
GLOCOM fellow at the Tokyo-based Japanese
Institute of Global Communications.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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