TOKYO - With seven months left before
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is to
step down, his rule is showing some cracks.
Koizumi has said he will step down as
president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) and thereby as prime minister in September
when his current three-year term at the helm of the
party expires. And what
happens between now and then will have a big
effect on the race to succeed him and ultimately
on the next leader.
The popular reformist
is expected to have a significant voice, if not
the final one, in picking his successor. Potential
successors have treaded carefully for fear of
losing his blessing. Some have parroted his
reformist slogan and openly defended his foreign
policy, including his controversial visits to the
war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
But
as Koizumi's power shows signs of eroding, his
potential successors may feel tempted to deviate
from the policy direction he has set, or at least
tweak it, in hopes of demonstrating they are their
own men.
Koizumi was riding a significant
wave of popularity when his his LDP-led coalition
won a landslide victory in last autumn's general
elections. But lately, he has been on the
defensive over a spate of scandals involving
accounting fraud by Internet startup Livedoor,
falsified earthquake-resistance data for
buildings, bid-rigging for construction projects
at the Defense Agency, and the reimposition of an
import ban on US beef.
Some blame the
government for letting former Livedoor president
and founder Takafumi Horie test legal loopholes
and limits with Livedoor's repeated stock splits
and aggressive takeovers. Horie, who ran
unsuccessfully in the election as an independent
but with the high-profile backing of the LDP, and
the company now face a range of criminal charges.
Farm Minister Shoichi Nakagawa and defense
chief Fukushiro Nukaga face pressure from the
opposition to take responsibility over the beef
and bid-rigging cases, respectively. But Koizumi
has shrugged off opposition demands for their
resignations.
Prosecutors on January 30
arrested Takayoshi Kawano, 57, a top official at
the Defense Facilities Administration Agency, and
two others on suspicion of leading bid-rigging for
projects ordered by the agency. The two others are
Takashige Matsuda, 52, an official at the agency's
general affairs department, and Mamoru Ikezawa,
57, the agency's former technical councilor.
The Koizumi government in December lifted
a ban on beef imports from the United States,
imposed two years earlier after the discovery of
the first case of mad-cow disease in Washington
state. But the government announced on January 20
that it would reimpose a total ban on US beef
imports after a shipment contained carcass parts
that posed a risk of bovine spongiform
encephalopathy. The opposition and consumer groups
have lashed out at the government for rushing to
resume US beef imports out of political
consideration for the United States and at the
expense of consumer safety. In another twist,
Nakagawa apologized for the government's failure
to keep its promise to send officials to check US
beef processors prior to resuming the imports.
The falsification of quake-resistance data
by architect Hidetsugu Aneha led to the
construction of numerous defective condominiums,
shocking the nation and leaving residents
distraught after they spent tens of millions of
yen to buy the units. The Land, Infrastructure and
Transport Ministry filed a criminal complaint in
December but the fallout has spread to political
circles. Kosuke Ito, an LDP lawmaker and former
chief of the now-defunct National Land Agency, has
had a fairly close relationship with Susumu Ojima,
president of Huser, a company at the center of the
scandal.
Koizumi's plunging popularity
apparently reflects a feeling among many Japanese
that his government is not properly handling this
recent series of incidents and scandals.
Meanwhile, some cabinet ministers,
including outspoken Foreign Minister Taro Aso, a
potential successor, have voiced doubts about
Koizumi's plan to amend the Imperial Household Law
to enable a woman to ascend the imperial throne.
Aso and Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki asked
for caution recently over any such revisions. They
made their comments before the news of Princess
Kiko's pregnancy broke on February 7, shelving
Koizumi's plan.
A public opinion poll
shows that support for the Koizumi cabinet has
sharply nosedived. Many of "Koizumi's children" -
the more than 80 LDP Lower House members elected
for the first time in September's elections on the
back of the premier's popularity - have joined LDP
factions, ignoring his advice not to do so, at
least until the LDP presidential election in
September.
A poll by the major business
daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, published on February
6, showed that support for the Koizumi cabinet had
plunged to 45%, a sharp decline of 14% from the
previous survey in December. The disapproval
rating rose 9% to 43%. The newspaper attributed
the decline in popular support - the first since
early August immediately after he dissolved the
Lower House for a snap election - to the series of
incidents and scandals. Noting an unfavorable mood
that has gripped the government and the LDP
recently, a senior coalition leader said on
condition of anonymity, "The feeling that the
[Koizumi] administration is in its last days has
emerged."
Speak one's mind In
Nagata-cho, Japan's political nerve center where
the prime minister's official residence, the diet
building and LDP headquarters are located, four
potential candidates to succeed Koizumi are
collectively called "Kozo Asagaki", a name coined
using one Chinese character from each of the four
names - Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe,
Tanigaki, Aso, and former chief cabinet secretary
Yasuo Fukuda.
The contenders say they will
begin to talk in earnest about their ambitions
after the fiscal 2006 budget is enacted in the
diet, or parliament, by the end of March.
When Koizumi formed the current cabinet on
October 31 after the elections, he said, "I've
placed the right people in the right places." He
described his new team as "a cabinet to carry on
reforms". Koizumi had previously indicated he
would bring his potential successors into his new
team and let them compete for reform. His implicit
message was: only a real and fully tested reformer
is qualified to follow in his footsteps.
Since naming his new cabinet, Koizumi has
pursued three reforms as top priorities -
consolidation or even abolition of
government-affiliated financial institutions,
reduction in the bloated number of central and
local government employees, and the so-called
triune reform of local government finances. The
ultimate goal of these reforms is to make the
central government leaner and more efficient amid
the ballooning budget deficit. Japan's fiscal
condition is already the worst among major
industrialized economies. The total deficits held
by the central and local governments are expected
to reach 775 trillion yen (US$6.5 trillion), or
about 150% of the country's gross domestic product
(GDP), at the end of fiscal 2006.
Key
election issues With the LDP presidential
election still seven months away, major election
issues have emerged. Among them are Japan's Asia
policy, the consumption-tax hike, and the
perceived widening of a gap between rich and poor
in a society long known for its
"all-Japanese-are-middle-class mentality".
A split has emerged recently among cabinet
ministers and senior LDP members over the proposed
rise in the consumption-tax rate. Tanigaki has
distanced himself from Koizumi on the
consumption-tax issue, insisting that necessary
bills to raise the tax be introduced to the diet
in the first half of 2007. Koizumi has said any
such tax hike will not come that early and argued
that the government should give top priority to
cutting spending before considering increasing the
tax burden on the public. The conservative Abe is
also believed to be against the bill.
On
the foreign-policy front, Japan's relations with
Asian neighbors, especially China and South Korea,
are likely to be a top election issue. Japan's
political ties with those two countries have
plunged to their lowest points in decades because
of nasty territorial rows and the dispute over a
history textbook authored by a group of right-wing
scholars for use at high schools, as well as
Koizumi's repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine,
where 14 World War II Class A war criminals,
including former prime minister Hideki Tojo, are
enshrined along with some 2.5 million war dead.
Among the four leading candidates to
succeed Koizumi, Abe, by far the most popular
among them, and Aso are both known as hawkish and
anti-China as well as being staunch supporters of
Koizumi's visits to the Shinto war shrine.
Tanigaki and Fukuda, known as pro-China
politicians, are seen as critical of the Yasukuni
visits. But there are growing calls for a change
in Koizumi's Asian policy, not only from the
opposition but also from within the LDP-New
Komeito party coalition and business circles.
China, Japan's largest trading partner,
has threatened to keep top-level bilateral
contacts frozen if Koizumi's successor visits
Yasukuni Shrine. Sino-Japanese relations are often
said to be "cold in politics and hot in economy".
Japanese businesses fear the frosty political ties
might spill over into the business realm, hurting
their business opportunities in China. Toyota
Motor Corp chairman Hiroshi Okuda, also chairman
of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon
Keidanren), the nation's biggest business lobby,
said in his New Year news conference that if
possible, he hoped the Koizumi government would
change its policy toward Asian neighbors,
especially China.
As the top government
spokesman, Abe has meticulously chosen words to
avoid unnecessary controversy. But Aso has made
one controversial remark after another since
taking the post of foreign minister. Aso said in
December that China was beginning to pose a
"considerable threat". In an attempt to assuage
China's anger at his remark, the Koizumi cabinet
disclosed a position paper in January that
indicated Japan does not recognize China as a
threat. Last month, Aso urged Emperor Akihito to
visit Yasukuni Shrine. More recently, Aso used the
word "country" to refer to Taiwan. Japan does not
recognize the island as a country. Aso also stated
in the same speech that Japan's colonial rule of
Taiwan contributed to its high
compulsory-education standards.
According
to a survey conducted by the Japan Business
Federation, 43% of executives at federation member
firms named Abe when asked who is the most
suitable to be the next prime minister, with
Fukuda the next favorite with 18%. Fukuda, whose
popularity is in the single digits in public
opinion polls by media organizations, is seen
among businesses as an icebreaker in chilly
Sino-Japanese ties.
Whoever succeeds
Koizumi will be faced with tough decisions apart
from anything the prime minister leaves them to
deal with.
With its society rapidly aging
and birth rate declining precipitously, Japan's
social-security system, including pensions,
medical insurance and nursing-care insurance for
the elderly, is creaking. Japan's population
shrank last year for the first time since the end
of World War II. There is a common view that it is
impossible to reduce staggering debts only with
cuts in expenditures. The current social-security
system is widely seen as bound to collapse in the
future because it was designed for a
pyramid-shaped demographic structure with a large
population of younger people.
Koizumi has
denied the widening gap between rich and poor. But
most Japanese think differently. A recent survey
by the Yomiuri Shimbun showed that three-fourths
of those polled agreed with the widespread
observation that their country is on the way to
becoming a society marked by a widening disparity
between winners and losers.
Add to the mix
that the Koizumi government plans to enact during
the current diet session a basic law for promoting
administrative reform, including the integration
and consolidation of government-affiliated
financial institutions and cutbacks in total
personnel cost of government employees. It is
aimed at legally binding his successor to continue
pursuing his reform drive.
Koizumi himself
has given indications he favors Abe, though he has
said he will not make his choice known until
immediately before the LDP presidential election.
Meanwhile, each of the "Kozo Asagaki"
seems to be going to great pains to be seen as
Koizumi's legitimate heir. Still, some of them, as
well as many LDP lawmakers, have begun to distance
themselves from the prime minister, underscoring
that his previously unchallenged leadership is
beginning to erode.
The next seven months
in Japanese politics should prove to be extremely
interesting.
Hisane Masaki is a
Tokyo-based journalist, commentator and scholar on
international politics and economy. Masaki's
e-mail address isyiu45535@nifty.com.
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