Fukuda heads Japan's leadership
race By Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - Former chief cabinet secretary
Yasuo Fukuda, a 71-year-old veteran moderate with
a reputation as a consensus-oriented politician,
has emerged as the front-runner in the race to
succeed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who
abruptly announced his resignation on Wednesday.
Fukuda, the eldest son of the late prime
minister Takeo Fukuda, on Friday declared his
candidacy in the election, set for September 23,
to choose Abe's successor as president of the
ruling Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) and hence as prime minister.
LDP secretary general Taro Aso, 66,
previously considered by many to be a most likely
successor to Abe, joined Fukuda later on Friday by
throwing his hat into the ring as the election was
officially declared the same day. Aso served as
foreign minister under Abe until the prime
minister reshuffled his cabinet late last month.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Fukushiro
Nukaga, 63, who had expressed his intention to run
in the race on Thursday, bowed out on Friday,
making it almost certain that the leadership race
will be fought between Fukuda and Aso.
Many observers say the election of Fukuda,
who has already garnered broad support across
party factional lines, has become almost certain.
Aso is Abe's ally and shares hawkish views with
Abe on issues of foreign and security policy. Like
Fukuda, Aso is a political blue-blood. He is the
grandson of the late prime minister Shigeru
Yoshida.
On Thursday, a group of rookie
LDP lawmakers urged Abe's predecessor, Junichiro
Koizumi, to join the leadership race. These
lawmakers are dubbed "Koizumi children" because
his popularity played a key role in helping them
win seats in the last House of Representatives
election in September 2005.
But Koizumi
categorically ruled out seeking the helm of the
LDP and government again. He was quoted as telling
a young lawmaker, "I will not run. Look for
another person." He was also quoted as telling
former prime minister Yoshiro Mori that his not
running in the election is "100%" certain. Koizumi
has declared his support for Fukuda.
In
accordance with election-related schedules decided
by the general council, the top party
decision-making body, on Thursday afternoon,
Fukuda and Aso were expected to register their
candidacy at the party headquarters on Saturday,
officially kicking off campaigning for the
September 23 party election.
After Abe
made his surprise resignation announcement on
Wednesday, some party leaders planned to hold the
election on September 19. But many members
protested, contending that more time was needed.
In addition to 387 LDP members of the
Diet, Japan's parliament - 304 from the House of
Representatives and 83 from the House of
Councilors - the party's 47 prefectural chapters
will vote, with three votes allotted to each. This
means a total of 528 votes will be cast.
The LDP-led coalition lost control of the
House of Councilors in the late-July election to
the opposition led by the Democratic Party of
Japan (DPJ). But the LDP president will be assured
of election as prime minister in the Diet, as the
party controls the more powerful Lower House,
whose decisions take precedence over those of the
Upper House regarding the election of a prime
minister.
Former finance minister Sadakazu
Tanigaki, 62, who ran in last year's LDP
presidential race along with Abe and Aso, decided
not to run this time and, instead, threw his
support behind Fukuda. Tanigaki shares moderate
views with Fukuda on issues of foreign and
security policy. Both were critical of Koizumi's
repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which drew
angry responses from China and South Korea.
While Koizumi was in power, Abe - and Aso
- supported Koizumi's Yasukuni visits, although
Abe has refrained from making a shrine pilgrimage
himself as premier. Abe made a whirlwind tour of
Beijing and Seoul last October shortly after
taking office, and Japan's relations with the two
Asian neighbors, frozen under Koizumi, began to
thaw. As Abe's foreign minister, a post he held
until late last month, Aso also refrained from
worshipping at the shrine.
Fukuda belongs
to the largest LDP faction, currently chaired by
Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura. The group has
80 Diet members. Immediately before declaring his
candidacy, Fukuda met with leaders of three of the
other factions and formally gained their support.
The three faction leaders are former LDP secretary
general Makoto Koga, former LDP vice president
Taku Yamasaki, and Tanigaki. The Koga and Yamasaki
factions are the third- and fourth-largest forces
within the party.
These three factions
have been critical of the current political
confusion created by Abe and his ally, Aso. Some
LDP lawmakers are critical of Aso, saying he has
failed to prevent Abe from making the resignation
announcement so soon - and so irresponsibly - only
two days after the premier delivered a key policy
speech in the Diet. Echoing views widely held by
many Fukuda supporters, Koga said on Thursday that
Aso should "inevitably hold responsibility for the
Abe administration".
Nukaga belongs to the
second-largest party faction, now led by Yuji
Tsushima, a former welfare minister. Now that
Nukaga has bowed out of the race, the Tsushima
faction is expected to support Fukuda. The
Tsushima faction has 64 Diet members. All the
other factions but one led by Aso himself are also
expected to support Fukuda, although some may
still vote for Aso in defiance of their faction
policies. The Aso faction is small, with only 16
Diet members.
Many LDP members are wary of
the structural reforms under Koizumi and Abe,
which they have blamed for social inequalities,
including between rural and urban areas, one of
major factors in the LDP's historic electoral
drubbing in July. There are strong concerns within
the party about a possible loss of power in the
next general election for the House of
Representatives, which must be held by September
2009 but is likely to be held much earlier,
possibly this year.
Whichever candidate
wins the race to step into Abe's shoes - Fukuda or
Aso - the reform drive started by Koizumi and
basically inherited by Abe will very likely lose
momentum, if not be reversed completely. While
having won a reputation as a hard-headed
politician with a knack for adjusting policies
among government ministries, Fukuda has often been
criticized by some as too close to government
bureaucrats.
If Fukuda wins the current
leadership race, the LDP could face public
criticism for choosing its - and hence the
national - leader based on faction-oriented
politics that most Japanese thought Koizumi had
mothballed as a symbol of the old LDP and an
obstacle to reform when he roared into office in
2001. Koizumi won the 2001 leadership race,
thumping the leader of what was then the largest
party faction, former prime minister Ryutaro
Hashimoto. The faction then led by Hashimoto is
now headed by Tsushima.
Aso may be
trailing Fukuda, but with his gift of the gab and
well-known penchant for comic books, he is more
popular with the public than the no-nonsense
Fukuda. Aso apparently pins his only hope on
rallying more support from local party chapters.
In fact, Koizumi won an unexpected
come-from-behind victory over Hashimoto in the
2001 race buoyed by overwhelming support from
local chapters.
Meanwhile, Abe, 52, was
hospitalized on Thursday afternoon for an
intestinal disorder and will require a hospital
stay of at least a few more days to recover. When
he announced his resignation on Wednesday, he
cited his failure to obtain the DPJ's support for
an extension of the Maritime Self-Defense Force's
refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in support
of coalition military operations in Afghanistan.
The 2001 special law authorizing the
refueling mission, which was originally effective
for two years, has been extended three times -
first in 2003 for two years, second in 2005 for a
year and third in 2006 for a year. The DPJ has
voted against each of the past three extensions.
Now led by Ichiro Ozawa, a former LDP heavyweight,
the opposition has vowed to block another
extension by flexing its newly acquired majority
in the Upper House.
The DPJ insists that
the US-led operations in Afghanistan have no
United Nations mandate and says that Japanese
troops should be sent abroad only to participate
in UN-led peacekeeping operations. It now appears
almost certain that the refueling mission will be
terminated, at least temporarily, when the law
expires on November 1.
Hisane
Masaki is a Tokyo-based journalist,
commentator and scholar on international politics
and economy. Masaki's e-mail address is
yiu45535@nifty.com.
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