Japanese politics drift to the
polls By Purnendra Jain
ADELAIDE - Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda
last Friday dissolved the lower house of Japan's
parliament and called a general election for
December 16, some eight months shy of its
four-year term. While prime ministers in the past
have dissolved the house before the full term for
snap elections, their actions were carefully timed
to gain advantage at the ballot box. This time,
the polls indicate that Noda's Democratic Party of
Japan (DPJ) is set to lose.
That the DPJ
might be relegated to the status of the opposition
less than four years after it came to power with a
thumping majority in August 2009 was previously
unthinkable. The Liberal Democratic Party monopoly
on power was long resented, but no party before
the DPJ came anywhere even close to defeating the
LDP, except for a brief period in 1993-1994 when a
rainbow coalition of seven parties succeeded,
briefly. But the fragmented
coalition did not last
long and the LDP quickly returned to power.
Political pundits, analysts, scholars and
political leaders around the world welcomed the
much-desired 2009 political change in Japan and
expected a new direction in domestic policy and
foreign relations. The DPJ's election manifesto
had pledged to make people-oriented policy and to
lead Japan away from a US-centric foreign policy
toward a more balanced approach to Asia,
especially Japan's near neighbors.
Instead
of such policy shifts, we witnessed perennial
internal political division, a lack of policy
consensus, political scandals, ministerial
resignations, policy and legislative deadlocks,
breakaway groups and a leadership crisis triggered
by rising public criticisms and falling support
for successive prime ministers.
The
earlier phenomenon of revolving-door prime
ministers, with three LDP premiers in quick
succession between 2006 and 2009, was duplicated
by the DPJ: from Yukio Hatoyama to Naoto Kan to
Noda. Is this new election going to make any
difference to Japan's recurrent political chaos
and leadership crises? The plain answer is no.
Opinion polls suggest that the DPJ will
lose its majority and the LDP will return with the
largest number of seats in the lower house, the
more powerful of the two houses of Japan's
parliament. Yet the LDP may not win enough seats
to form government on its own and it will be again
difficult to reach policy consensus within any
subsequent coalition. Moreover, an LDP-led
government with Shinzo Abe as prime minister is
likely to be very problematic.
Abe was
Japan's prime minister from 2006-2007, and he was
unremarkable. Public disapproval soared as a
result of his failures to fix pension records that
affected some 50 million people. Four of his
ministers resigned and one committed suicide after
political scandals were made public. Obviously, he
had poor political judgement. He carries with him
the heavy symbol of several policy failures and he
resigned abruptly citing poor health.
However, there were other push factors at
work, including his party's poor performance at
the 2007 upper house elections and mounting
pressure from within his own party to resign.
To be fair to Abe, he did try to improve
relations with China. These had become frosty due
to his predecessor's visits to the controversial
Yasukuni Shrine, where thousands of war dead are
buried and which both China and South Korea regard
as offensive, The visits reinforced perceptions
that Japan refuses to properly face to the
responsibilities that flow from its war in Asia.
Abe shunned visiting the shrine and made a
trip to China to mend relations but his idea of
revising the peace constitution and forming a
quadrilateral framework consisting of Japan,
India, Australia and the United States - followed
by his statement that there was no evidence of
forced sex slaves during the war - again raised
eyebrows in Beijing and Seoul.
Today, some
political developments have unnerved both the DPJ
and the LDP and might add to the current political
chaos. Award-winning novelist and right-wing
veteran politician Shintaro Ishihara, who served
as governor of the Tokyo Metropolis for about 13
years, gave up his position merely a year after
being re-elected for a fourth term in order to
form an alliance with the Japan Restoration Party,
a group established earlier this year by Osaka
Mayor Toru Hashimoto, a charismatic and photogenic
young politician with ambivalent policy
preferences.
Hashimoto and Ishihara are
presenting their party as a "third force" to
counter the two bigger ones, which they regard as
having failed the nation. Both are popular and
have announced they will recruit numerous
candidates to run for the lower house seats. It is
not clear how many they might be able to win and
what role they will play in the new parliament,
but Japanese politics will certainly become
messier than before.
To add to these
complexities, former LDP political heavyweight
Ichiro Ozawa, who masterminded the DPJ's landslide
victory, formed the People's Life First Party
earlier this year and it is largely unknown what
role it and he might play. Which of his past roles
will Ozawa choose this time: a destroyer or a
creator?
More political chaos is bad news
for Japan. Given Japan's economic stagnation, its
policy paralysis and diminishing international
status, what Japan requires now is political
stability and strong leadership to steer its
economy in the right direction, tackle the social
welfare issues of an aging society, bring back
alienated youth into the mainstream and, above
all, inject a fresh sense of hope and national
confidence.
This is a most challenging
time for Japanese voters. The LDP frustrated them
with its patronage politics and policy inertia.
The DPJ disappointed them equally badly through
frequent leadership change, political scandals and
back-pedaling on policy.
Now voters are
presented with a choice between two failed
political parties and an unknown new political
entity led by the two hawkish-nationalist
politicians. Which way will they turn? Will their
choice bring the much needed policy change to deal
with the serious economic and social challenges
facing Japan and foreign policy issues including
deteriorating relations with its near neighbors -
China and South Korea? Or will Japan remain
unchanged? The answers should concern us all.
Purnendra Jain is professor in
Asian Studies at Australia's Adelaide
University.
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