Asia Times: In the name of reform, will Koizumi destroy the LDP?


	June 1, 2001	atimes.com

Editorials

In the name of reform, will Koizumi destroy the LDP?

The last time a Japanese reformer in the mold of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi came around was 1993. In 1992, after serving as the popular governor of his home prefecture Kumamoto (Kyushu) from 1983-1991, Morihiro Hosokawa bolted from the Liberal Democratic Party and founded the Japan New Party (Nihon Shinto). Making common cause with another high-profile LDP defector, Ichiro Ozawa, a coalition led by Hosokawa won the summer 1993 parliamentary elections, sidelined the LDP, and formed a new government. Reform of the Japanese political and economic system after nearly four decades of LDP rule at long last seemed within reach.

Here's what Hosokawa said in a policy speech to the National Diet on September 21, 1993, a month and a half after becoming prime minister:

"It goes without saying that the first thing that we must do is to restore popular trust in government, but there are also a number of other issues that cannot wait, including dealing with the economic emergency, making a start on medium- and long-term socio-economic structural reforms, and responding to the very fluid international situation.

"We can put political reform off no longer ... [but] because determinedly implementing political reform including reform of the election system means radically transforming the political arena, it is only natural that there should be many different opinions and divergent interests here. Yet all of us involved in politics here today must face up to the fact that the distrust of politics could become irremediable and more and more people could well decide they are fed up with politics if we shy away from political reform.

"With the sluggish growth in personal consumption, the slump in private-sector investment and other factors ... the Japanese economy finds itself in a truly difficult situation ... While the collapse of the bubble economy and the consequent deterioration in corporate asset positions are behind this prolongation and exacerbation of the economic recession, it should also be noted that structural problems ... have impeded the emergence of truly satisfying consumer lifestyles and the development of dynamic business practices based upon entrepreneurship.

"With the priority emphasis on deregulation that will have the most direct impact for invigorating the economy and expanding domestic demand and for promoting imports, we have recently decided to implement deregulation for a wide range OF items ...".

Good speech, good intentions, but nothing much became of it. By the end of April 1994, Hosokawa was out of office and after a few ineffective coalition governments that followed, the LDP was back in the saddle.

Happily, it now seems that Koizumi-san has learned some of the lessons of the Hosokawa/Ozawa failure. In effect, the new prime minister, who continues to enjoy 80 to 90 percent public approval ratings, is telling the LDP and in particular the big-wigs of the party's dominant Hashimoto faction, that either the LDP - however grudgingly - will support his reforms or he will destroy it. It's a high-stakes gamble since, of course, if he destroys the LDP, Koizumi destroys the very vehicle he now rides. But he appears to have decided that it is a gamble worth taking.

Several recent initiatives, targeting especially the Hashimoto faction's base, include privatization of the Japan Highway Public Corporation, elimination of the requirement in law that all automobile and gasoline taxes must be used for repair and construction of new highways, and redistricting to give greater electoral power to urban over rural voters. Note that the construction industry and rural Japan are key supporters of the LDP and its majority faction. Koizumi's longer-term goals of privatizing the postal and post office savings systems and of instituting direct elections of the prime minister aim in the same direction.

Hosokawa and Ozawa founded new political parties in the attempt of pushing the LDP aside. It worked for a couple of years. But the LDP then quickly regrouped and recouped its power position. Koizumi knows that only by drastically reforming the LDP itself is there a lasting chance for reform. So, that's the Faustian deal he is proposing to the LDP old guard: Give me a hand in reform and we'll win elections together; thwart me and I'll destroy the party - even at the expense of my own position. In response, the old guard has taken to calling Koizumi "dictatorial" and "reckless". He had better be both if he wants to succeed.

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