Cross-posted at European Tribune
Germany is not the only big country having elections this fall. Exactly one week before the Germans go to the polls on September 18, Japanese voters will be electing a new 480-seat lower house.
There is talk that this election represents a “turning point” in modern Japanese political history:
The wavy-haired prime minister shocked the nation when he dissolved the lower house of parliament and called for new elections on Sept. 11. . . . [a] decision which the Japanese newspaper Gendai called nothing short of a “suicide bombing”
. . .
By holding new elections, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi hopes to get rid of opponents to reform within his party and, in doing so, finally lead the world’s second-largest industrialized nation out of its economic malaise. The coup could signal the end of a political era.
The outcome ought to be of interest not only to the Japanese, but to the whole world:
The rest of the world is looking to East Asia with concern, since it needs Japan to offer leadership in the region right now. In the most recent six-nation talks in Beijing, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il once again refused to abandon his nuclear program. Tokyo’s ties to its increasingly powerful rival, China, are at an all-time low, since the two countries normalized relations 33 years ago. But the most dangerous conflict of all is lurking off Japan’s coasts, where the country and its neighbors are quarreling over islands and bodies of water presumed to hold oil and natural gas reserves.
Politically confusing times would also be fatal for the economy. Despite signs of a recovery and a drop in unemployment to 4.2 percent, the Japanese are cutting back on consumer spending. Asia’s former No. 1 nation is desperately trying to pull itself out of a deflationary spiral.
The election may finally bring about the end of the 50-year monopoly of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) over Japanese politics:
Koizumi has launched a purge against dissidents in his [LDP] party — essentially a coup from above. . . . Koizumi has split the LDP, almost constantly the ruling party since 1955, dragging the world’s second-largest industrialized nation into deep political uncertainty.
Why did Koizumi do it?
Members of parliament from his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) were the ones who brought down his postal service privatization reforms in the upper house.
But instead of working out a compromise, Koizumi took the opportunity to embark on a campaign of revenge against his opponents within the party.
In many ways this campaign is breaking the mold of traditional Japanese politics:
The flamboyant prime minister has attempted to cast the race as a dramatic battle between reformers like himself against conservative dinosaurs in the LDP, which has ruled Japan almost uninterruptedly since 1955.
He has also made deft use of the media spotlight, a major shift from the days in which prime ministers and governments were made and broken in closed-door deals between the LDP’s main power-brokers, with little concern for public opinion.
The election will also be distinguished by its focus on policy issues — another watershed in a system that for decades has operated on the basis of the party machinery’s ability to funnel pork-barrel funds from Tokyo out to outlying regions.
”This is a new trend in Japanese politics. People are increasingly voting on the policies of individual parties,” said Masaaki Kanno, a political economist at JP Morgan in Tokyo. ”Now the manifestos of the different parties have become very clear.”
The main policy issue is Koizumi’s proposed privatization of Japan’s postal system, the world’s largest banking and insurance organization. This is seen as a key step toward deregulating the Japanese financial system and economy:
At the center of the campaign is Koizumi’s effort to split up and sell the postal system, which holds some 330 trillion yen (US$2.9 trillion; €2.4 trillion) in savings and insurance deposits.
Reform advocates argue privatization would put those funds at the disposal of the market and provide for more efficient allocation of Japan’s ample savings, thereby boosting the economy.
Koizumi argues that the government’s withdrawal from the postal service is a condition of further reforms: a new pension system for the aging Japanese nation as well as a restructuring of its national debt. At more than US$6 trillion, Japan’s national debt is higher on a per capita basis than that of any other leading industrialized country.
Opponents, however, say the reform would curtail postal services, put the hard-earned savings of workers at risk and threaten the businesses of existing private financial and insurance companies.
Of course, there is politics involved here too:
In reforming the postal service, Koizumi also planned to dry up his LDP opponents’ sources of funding, and that’s what led to the rupture within the party. . . . the country’s roughly 400,000 postal workers serve as an important support contingent for the LDP.
Somewhat forgotten in the midst of all this intra-party squabbling is the main opposition group, the Democratic Party of Japan:
The Democrats have countered Koizumi’s reform plans with their own policy platform . . .
The Democratic Party, among other ideas, plans to cut government spending by 10 trillion yen (US$91.5 billion; €74 billion) by 2008, in part by reducing government employees’ pay by 20 percent, abolishing lawmakers’ pensions, and scrapping Japan’s pensions agency.
It will also pull the country’s noncombat troops from the U.S.-led reconstruction effort in Iraq by December if voted into government.
The opposition Democratic Party (DP) could ultimately benefit from the LDP’s self-destruction. But when it comes to important reform issues, the DP’s members are almost as much at odds with one another as the Liberal Democrats.
What are the prospects for these various groups on September 11?
. . . a Tokyo Shimbun newspaper poll showed Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party with some 40 percent public support — nearly double the 24 percent support among respondents for the leading opposition group, the Democratic Party of Japan.
But while Koizumi is personally popular, it is not clear how easily that will translate into votes for his new, improved, reform-minded LDP:
Koizumi has already won the first round in this political drama. According to opinion polls, his approval rating has shot up to almost 50 percent. But this still doesn’t mean that the Japanese will also vote for the other members of his “new” LDP. The ruthlessness with which he is now dispatching so-called killer candidates into the election districts of former party friends could act like a boomerang.
All in all it should make for an interesting election season.