TOKYO - Japan's main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is
already a clear front-runner in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election
scheduled for Sunday. This local election, right in the heart of the national
capital, is perceived as a prelude battle to a crucial general election, likely
to be held in August, accelerating a major power shift from Japan's de facto
one-party rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for more than half a
century.
Prime Minister Taro Aso, president of the LDP, will face pressure to step down
immediately - both from inside and outside the party - if the LDP were to
heavily lose the Tokyo election. This political climate is increasingly
becoming a repeat of August 1993, when
the LDP was toppled from nearly four decades of power by the Morihiro Hosokawa
administration led by the now-defunct Japan New Party. This followed a crushing
defeat in the election for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly in 1993, amid the
collapse of the so-called bubble economy in the early 1990s.
Japanese bureaucrats, meanwhile, are taking advantage of the political
confusion. Especially the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the strongest ministry
that controls the nation's purse; it recently lofted a once trouble-causing and
beleaguered official back onto center stage of the ponderous bureaucracy. The
ministry is also regaining its political and economic power by adopting
once-forbidden personnel exchanges between the ministry and the Financial
Services Agency (FSA), the government's independent organization responsible
for overseeing banking, securities and exchange.
The Tokyo election
The LDP may be losing ground to its main opposition rival. In the final stage
of the campaign, all the major Japanese media have suggested that the LDP is
likely to fall behind the largest opposition, the DPJ, in Sunday's elections in
Tokyo.
The DPJ is likely to become the biggest party in the Tokyo metropolitan
assembly, ahead of the ruling LDP, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Thursday.
Out of the 127-seat chamber, the DPJ is expected to add to the 34 seats it
holds now, already endorsing a record 58 candidates and riding on the back of
key victories against LDP-backed candidates in recent major local elections,
such as the Shizuoka Prefecture gubernatorial race.
The LDP, on the other hand, faces a major challenge in holding onto its current
48 seats, Japan's largest business newspaper said. The focus is on whether the
LDP and junior coalition partner New Komeito will be able to hold onto a
majority, or 64 seats, in the Tokyo Assembly, the paper added.
More than 30% said they would vote for the DPJ-backed candidates in the
metropolitan election, up 13.2 percentage points from a survey before the
previous election in 2005 and far more than the 18.2% who said they would vote
for the LDP, a Kyodo News opinion poll also showed on Monday.
The approval rating for Aso's cabinet among the poll respondents in Tokyo stood
at 19.3%, while 75.1% disapproved. The Aso administration's failure to take
effective and speedy actions in coping with the ailing and sluggish economy
amid its worst post-war economic slump, the worst performing in the developed
world during this recession, could bring about an unexpected higher voter
turnout, possibly handing down a clear no-confidence vote to Aso.
"The DPJ will become the dominant party in the Tokyo assembly for sure," Minoru
Morita, a noted political analyst in Tokyo, told Asia Times Online. "The
alliance with the Liberals and the New Komeito is also likely to fail to reach
a majority. Pressure for Aso to step down will be mounting after the Tokyo
Metropolitan Assembly election, and the LDP may hold a leadership election
ahead of the key lower house election. I see a 60% chance of the LDP's
presidential election soon."
Memories of 1993
In August 9, 1993, the Hosokawa administration was born after the LDP suffered
an ignominious defeat in the Lower House election on July 18 that year because
of the bribery and corruption of the regime ruled by the LDP mono-party.
Earlier, on June 27, the then newly born Japan New Party led by Hosokawa
secured 20 seats in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly, heavily damaging the
then-Kiichi Miyazawa administration and then bringing about the non-LDP
coalition government under Hosokawa.
Yukio Hatoyama, the current head of the DPJ, served as vice chief cabinet
secretary in the cabinet of Hosokawa from 1993 to 1994. The first non-LDP
cabinets in more than 30 years, led by primers Hosokawa and Tsutomu Hata,
lasted only a combined total of 10 months, as the then-Japan Socialist Party
left the coalition, destroying its majority in the Diet (parliament) and
forcing it out of power.
Finance flexes its muscles
Many political analysts see the Ministry of Finance as taking advantage of the
political confusion. The ministry announced on July 3 it would appoint Rintaro
Tamaki, 55, to replace Naoyuki Shinohara as vice finance minister for
international affairs, the official responsible for currency policy, effective
on July 14.
Tamaki was a high school classmate of Shoichi Nakagawa, Japan's former tipsy
finance minister and head of the FSA, who resigned in February following his
slurring and yawning news conference at a Group of Seven meeting in Rome.
Tamaki, director general of the Finance Ministry's International Bureau who
accompanied Nakagawa to Rome, defended Nakagawa by saying the then-finance
chief didn't drink a lot of the wine and only "tasted it with his lips".
In a July 3 announcement, the ministry for the first time allowed high-ranking
FSA officials to transfer with Finance Ministry officials since the complete
separation of the FSA from the ministry in 1998, which aimed to divide planning
and supervision functions. For example Toshiyuki Ohtou, 54, deputy commissioner
for policy coordination at the FSA, was named as the new director-general of
the Customs and Tariff Bureau at the MOF.
"With the upcoming advent of a new administration led by the main opposition,
bureaucrats such as those in the Ministry of Finance are now desperate to
defend their ministries," Morita said. "They are strongly uniting in their
common interest against the DPJ."
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist.
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