Asia Times: Japan: Mr Pork-barrel quits


	May 3, 2000	atimes.com

Editorials

Japan: Mr Pork-barrel quits - and now what?

Former prime minister Noboru Takeshita, age 76, said on Monday that he will not run for re-election and retire from politics at the end of the current - his 14th - lower house of parliament term. Coming on the heels of the April 1 incapacitation of former prime minister Keizo Obuchi, who had inherited the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party's main faction from Takeshita, commentators have found it irresistible to hold forth on the end of an era. Unfortunately, it probably won't be - and not only because Takeshita's younger brother Wataru will be running for Noboru's Shimane prefecture seat and is likely to win.

Takeshita was prime minister from 1987-89, succeeding Yasuhiro Nakasone whom he had served as minister of finance. But more important than his MOF stint was the fact that he had by then inherited leadership of the powerful Tanaka faction, named after the 1972-74 prime minister Kakuei Tanaka, disgraced in the Lockheed scandal and later tried and convicted (1983) for taking over US$2 million in bribes. It was Tanaka who set the style for the Takeshita pork-barrel cum behind-the-scenes-machinations policies that dominate the LDP to this day. And indeed, though Takeshita has been hospitalized with a severe illness since April 1999, he has continued to impose his policy blend on the LDP and to date no serious personnel decisions have been made without him. One serious consequence of his dominant role is that within Japan's leading political party no new leadership able to think of running the country by means other than back-room deals, regulatory protection of small business and agricultural interests, and strings-attached public works contracts to big business clients has been allowed to develop.

New Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, not of the Tanaka-Takeshita faction, but entirely beholden to it, indicated in Rome (he is on a whirlwind G7 nations foreign trip) on Monday that lower house elections may be held at the end of June - June 25 being the likely date. With the main opposition Democratic Party (Minshuto), cobbled together two years ago and without any apparent ability to make a mark with voters or define policy alternatives, it's a pretty safe bet that the LDP and its current coalition partners will form the next government. Whether Mori or another LDP mainstream leader will head it will make precious little difference.

And that's not a pretty picture or prospect. The Japanese economy will not likely relapse into recession. Some of the country's large, well-run international companies will pull the economy along. But no matter how much the Sonys, Toyotas, Hondas or Softbanks try, with the un-deregulated sectors and pork-barrel beneficiaries around their necks, they won't get it up to speed, not beyond one or two percent annual growth. Any expectation, however, that with the exit of Takeshita a new broom will sweep away debilitating regulatory regimes would be mistaken. There are no new brooms to do the job. Any and all LDPers or ex-LDPers who ever tried to reform the party or to create a viable alternative to it have failed: Hosokawa, Hata, Ozawa are all gone. Koichi Kato, who has credible reform credentials and remains in the LDP, has been effectively sidelined.

So, we wait and we wait. But until Japanese voters finally say ''enough is enough'', the Tanaka-Takeshita legacy will rule the day. And unhappily, the day conservative voters are likely to say that lies in a rather distant future. Better the devil you know . . .

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