Japan's Aso already a lame duck
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - Just a little more than two months since he took office, Taro Aso is
increasingly losing his way as Japan's prime minister. While the world's
second-largest economy is suffering from a deep recession, his administration
has delayed submitting an additional supplementary budget to the current Diet
(parliament) session, upsetting voters. His numerous gaffes have also caused
his popularity to plummet.
The government's failure to take appropriate, decisive and speedy action in
coping with the ailing economy could bring about an unexpectedly high voter
turnout in the next national election, with a good possibility of changing the
ruling party - a major power shift from Japan's 50-plus years of de facto
one-party rule. Some
members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have even started to call
for political realignment before the election, with signs of such vigorous
moves already emerging.
"With the Aso cabinet's approval rating plunging, we are beginning to fail to
suppress internal criticism against it," Chuichi Date, a LDP Upper House member
who currently serves as the party's deputy secretary general, told Asia Times
Online. "I see a 50-50 chance of a regrouping of political force in January
ahead of a snap election."
Although two months ago the ruling LDP-New Komeito coalition chose Aso as the
front man for a snap election, Aso has postponed it, viewing it as a fatal
battle that could change the governing party from the LDP to the main
opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
The delayed election tactic has now backfired. Failing to capitalize on the
brief honeymoon support Aso received from the public in late September, he
missed a good opportunity to use the privileges a prime minister enjoys. These
include dissolving the House of Representatives (provided his party had won
elections), appointing cabinet members and party officials, and compiling the
national budget - something that United States president-elect Barack Obama
keeps showing the world.
Aso said he had delayed polls to cope with the faltering economy in the midst
of what he called the "once-in-a-century" financial crisis, stressing policies
should come before politics. But he has also postponed submitting the second
extra budget designed to finance an additional economic stimulus package worth
27 trillion yen (US$290 billion), including a 2 trillion yen cash benefit
program for households. Aso and other LDP officials have said it will take time
to deliberate fiscal 2009 taxation reform and to compile the national budget
for the next fiscal year.
"The Aso administration is forced to delay forming a second supplementary
budget because it accompanies many systemic revisions and the passage of
related bills to furnish money to the public," said the LDP's Date. "Besides
those technical reasons, the LDP is afraid that submitting an extra budget
during the ongoing Diet session could cause a political deadlock, which would
lead to a snap election early next year."
DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa, meanwhile, last month requested that Aso submit a
second supplementary budget to the current Diet session. Aso has stopped short
of promising Ozawa he would do so, bringing about the DPJ's much tougher stance
against the Aso administration.
"It was the government's promise when [Aso] said economic measures before the
election," Ozawa told reporters after a meeting with Aso. "It's not appropriate
to take an approach to make a fool of the public."
Aso's rapid decline in popularity
Top daily newspapers on Monday all reported dismal public support for the Aso
cabinet, ranging from 21-22%, even lower than the 25% for the cabinet of Aso's
predecessor, the unpopular Yasuo Fukuda, right before his abrupt resignation
announcement on September 1. Support for Aso's cabinet fell to 22% in an Asahi
newspaper poll, from 37% a month ago. Polls published in the Yomiuri and
Mainichi newspapers showed similar sharp declines.
Even more notably, the disapproval rate for the Aso cabinet increased sharply
to 64% from 41% in the Asahi survey. The non-support rating for his cabinet
rose to 66.7% in the latest survey conducted by the Yomiuri
Shimbun, double the 33.4% in an early November survey.
Aso's personal credibility has suffered from numerous gaffes. On November 19 he
said he thought that many doctors "lack common sense" and have a "totally
different" value system, offending doctors across the country. On the same day,
he told a meeting, "I respect the kindergarten director who said that the
people who should be disciplined are mothers rather than children."
The prime minister also said on November 20, "'Why should I pay for [the
medical costs of] people who [become sick] because they just keep on drinking
and eating and doing nothing," according to the minutes of a Council on
Economic and Fiscal Policy meeting.
Aso was later forced to apologize for these remarks.
Aso's decline has boosted the opposition DPJ ahead of elections that are
required to be held by September 2009. Thirty-five percent of respondents in
the Asahi survey said they would prefer Ozawa as prime minister, compared with
30% who chose the incumbent. This is the first time Ozawa has pushed ahead of
Aso in this category.
In a conversation broadcast on nationwide television on Monday night, Motoo
Hayashi, the LDP's acting secretary general, said at a board meeting attended
by Aso, "Today [I was] disappointed to see the support rate for the cabinet."
Then, Tadamori Oshima, the party's Diet Affairs Committee chairman, hastily
interrupted Hayashi's discourse. Aso just listened and remained silent.
This scene symbolically represents the LDP's concern over the Aso
administration and more than a few people have been able to speak frankly and
bluntly to Aso himself.
Political realignment
There is widespread speculation that the sharp fall in Aso's approval rating
will touch off vigorous moves toward political realignment.
As Gerald Curtis, professor of Japanese politics at Columbia University,
correctly predicted in an email interview in early September, one would
represent the so-called Koizumi school, named after former prime minister
Junichiro Koizumi. This group may involve Hidenao Nakagawa, the LDP's former
secretary general; Yuriko Koike, a former defense minister; Yoshimi Watanabe, a
former minister of administrative reform and currently a vocal critic of Aso's
weak political leadership; and Seiji Maehara, a former leader of the opposition
DPJ.
Another group would involve the LDP's powerful politicians, such as Koichi Kato
and Taku Yamazaki and leaders of opposition parties such as Naoto Kan and
Shizuka Kamei. This group is believed to favor a combination of rather old-line
conservative big-government types in the LDP and more socialist-leaning
big-government types in the DPJ.
The LDP's Date pointed out that Ozawa and Kato have advanced consultations in
recent days.
The LDP has only lost power for a total of 10 months since 1955. The party
seems to be finally completing its historical missions in the post-Cold War era
- missions supporting Japan's role as an anti-communist bastion of the US
against Russia and favoring bureaucratic centralization with pork-barrel
politics.
The popular Koizumi used to repeatedly vow to "destroy" the LDP if it refused
to reform, boosting the party's strength. Looking back, history will show the
Koizumi era was a rare exception as the party's prestige weakens.
Kosuke Takahashi, a former staff writer at the Asahi Shimbun, is a
freelance correspondent based in Tokyo. He can be contacted at letters@kosuke.net.
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