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2 Japan: A political tsunami
approaches By Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - A political tsunami may sweep
Japan soon and alter the nation's political
landscape amid an ever swelling wave of public
anger over the government's pension
records-keeping fiasco and other scandals.
Will the government of beleaguered Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe manage to keep itself afloat?
Or will it be written off by voters and pensioned
off in a key national election this month? Or will there
be
any other sea-changes?
For Abe, the
election for the House of Councilors, or the upper
house of Japan's bicameral Diet (parliament), on
July 29 will be a moment of truth, as it is his
first electoral test since he took office last
autumn. As things stand now, Abe's Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP)-led coalition is facing an
uphill battle to retain a majority.
A loss
of control of the chamber, even after wooing
independent conservatives and possibly members of
tiny conservative parties, would make the Abe
government a lame duck at best. Chances of its
being toppled immediately after the poll because
of a landslide defeat are also growing. Some
pundits even say that the upcoming election could
trigger a new wave of realignments in Japanese
politics.
For Abe and his coalition,
things are turning from bad to worse. Public
support for the Abe cabinet remains stuck at
abysmally low levels because of the pension issue
and a series of other political scandals, with
some recent opinion polls showing it slipping
below 30%, a figure widely considered to be a
crisis level for any cabinet.
In yet
another serious blow to the already embattled
prime minister and his coalition, Fumio Kyuma, the
gaffe-prone defense minister, resigned on Tuesday
after causing widespread outrage with remarks that
were widely taken as justifying the atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United
States in the closing days of World War II. Kyuma
said in a speech last weekend that the A-bomb
attacks "could not be helped".
Defense
became the third cabinet portfolio to change hands
since Abe was inaugurated last September,
succeeding Junichiro Koizumi. One of two
scandal-tainted members of the Abe team resigned
in December and the other committed suicide in
May. Kyuma's resignation - and Abe's acceptance of
it - was aimed at minimizing any adverse effect on
the coalition's prospects in the upcoming
election.
Yuriko Koike, Abe's 54-year-old
special adviser on national security, stepped into
Kyuma's shoes as defense chief on Wednesday. Abe's
appointment of the popular former environment
minister as Japan's first female defense chief
apparently reflects a strong desire to see her
play the role of poster child for the coalition in
the election campaign, which will officially kick
off on July 12.
Life-or-death
threshold Abe, who doubles as LDP
president, has sought desperately to soothe
voters' furor over mismanaged pension records and
other scandals ahead of the July 29 poll. But as
recent opinion polls show, he has so far failed to
do so.
The Social Insurance Agency, under
the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health, Labor
and Welfare, has been found to have some 50
million unidentified pension premium-payment
records. This means many retirees could get
short-changed.
Abe has promised to clean
up the pension problem within a year. Last week,
the LDP-led coalition also pushed through a pair
of pension-related bills to deal with the fiasco.
The two new laws, enacted in an extended ordinary
session of the Diet, will dissolve the Social
Insurance Agency and scrap the five-year statute
of limitations on claims for unpaid pensions.
Last week, the coalition also pushed
through the Diet a bill to enhance transparency in
political-fund transfers in the wake of a spate of
scandals involving some politicians from both the
ruling and opposition camps. The new law requires
lawmakers' political-fund management groups to
attach a receipt to their fund reports for every
recurring spending item worth 50,000 yen (US$408)
or more.
Last week, the coalition also
rammed through the Diet a bill to revise the
National Public Service Law to deal with the
problem of the much-criticized 'amakudari'
(descent from heaven) practice of post-retirement
hiring of senior bureaucrats in government
affiliates as well as corporations.
At the
behest of Abe, the coalition had extended the Diet
session by 12 days from its original closing day
of June 23 until this Thursday to ensure the
enactment of those key bills. As a result, the
quadrennial House of Councilors election has been
delayed by a week from the originally planned July
22 to July 29. It remains to be seen whether - and
how - the delay will affect the results.
Aside from the pension fiasco,
rehabilitating the creaking social-security
system, including pension, medical insurance and
nursing-care insurance for the elderly, has
emerged as a pressing task for the government amid
the rapidly graying population.
Many
critics charge that both the LDP-led coalition and
the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) are
irresponsible because the former has opted to
steer clear of a possible hike in the current 5%
consumption tax until after the House of
Councilors election and the latter has dropped its
earlier proposal for an increase in the tax rate
to 8%. Many experts say - and even many voters
feel - that a hike in the consumption tax will
become inevitable in the not-so-distant future to
finance rising social-security costs and stem an
even further rise in government debts.
The
consumption tax was introduced in 1989, but only a
few months later, then-prime minister Noboru
Takeshita was forced to resign. The tax rate was
raised from the original 3% to the current 5% in
1997, after which consumer spending slumped and
the country slipped back into recession. The LDP
suffered a debilitating loss in the House of
Councilors election held the following year,
forcing then-prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto from
office.
Capitalizing on public outrage
over the pension and other scandals, Ichiro Ozawa,
leader of the biggest opposition DPJ, has vowed to
stake his political life on depriving the LDP-led
coalition of a majority in the House of
Councilors. Ozawa made it clear on Thursday that
he will step down as leader if the opposition camp
fails. If the coalition loses a majority in the
upper house, the Abe government would be a lame
duck.
To be sure, the coalition between
the LPD and New Komeito, a party backed by lay
Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai, commands more
than a two-thirds majority in the 480-seat House
of Representatives, the more powerful lower house
of the Diet, after a landslide victory in the
election held in September 2005 under Koizumi.
Nevertheless, if the LDP-New Komeito coalition
loses a majority, it will face significant
difficulties pushing through its legislative
agendas, causing political paralysis.
At
present, the LDP-New Komeito coalition has a
majority of 134 seats in the 242-seat House of
Councilors, with 110 held by the
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