Japan: A Total Conservative Victory

The same Japanese voters that on August 30, 2009 turned the Liberal Democrats out of office and put the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in have now completely reversed course. The Democrats didn’t live up to expectations. Will the Liberal Democrats be able to do so now? But let’s get back to the election results.

 

The LDP got everything it had hoped for and which few analysts had predicted for it. Along with its ally — the New Komeito Party — it now essentially has an absolute majority in the lower house — more than two-thirds of the votes — and that will let it veto any decision by the upper house, in which there is a stalemate situation: The DPJ didn’t hold a majority there before; now the LDP-Komeito bloc lacks a majority, and everything depends on how the small parties vote. A more convincing victory would be difficult to imagine.

 

In winning 294 seats, the LDP got two and a half times more seats than it did in 2009. Komeito got 31 seats, which also reversed its previous defeat, but that decisively confirmed its status as an LDP satellite along with its voter base (the neo-Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai), but without its political face. The Japan Restoration Party (JRP), which is led by former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, must be considered the second winner; it won 54 seats, compared with its current 11, and those were defectors from other parties. The Japanese media don’t consider this a very good showing in light of the party’s statements and claims during the election campaign and especially before it got underway, but the JRP’s success gives Japan’s conservatives a definite and total victory.

 

Japanese voters —honestly, with no hanky-panky — voted to raise the consumption tax; to keep nuclear energy; to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP); to stick with the military-political alliance with the United States and, therefore, the existing military base agreements; and to restore the bureaucrats’ dominance over the politicians. That is, they voted for all of the “unpopular” things. They made their choice.

 

The Democrats who ruled the country for three and a half years received a total of 57 seats, i.e., more than five times fewer than they had after their victory August 30, 2009, and four times fewer than they had before the election. This can be considered the party’s political death, at least in its current form. The new parliament doesn’t include 8 of Yoshihiko Noda’s 18 cabinet members, although they were nominated both in single-member districts and on the party slate. For the first time since the war, the Chief Cabinet Secretary — tacitly the number two man after the Prime Minister — lost his seat. Moreover, that happened both to Osamu Fujimura and to one of his predecessors, Yoshito Sengoku. Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan lost in a single-member district. Perhaps the most ignominious defeat was that of “Japan’s first housewife” Makiko Tanaka, who didn’t just lose her seat in parliament, she lost her “ancestral” electoral district in Niigata Prefecture, which she inherited many years ago from her father — former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. I’d venture to say that Makiko-san is very sorry that she defected from the Liberal Democrats, whom she served as Foreign Minister (although with dismal results), to the Democrats, who entrusted her only with the post of Minister of Education and Science. And as it turned out, she didn’t keep that post for long.

 

The Democrats’ defeat can be considered total even though they truly meant well, and the problems they failed to solve were ones they inherited from the Liberal Democrats. Then there was last year’s earthquake — something people have no control over. The DPJ not only failed as an effective long-term alternative to the LDP, it also failed to hold onto its status as the “second party,” although in the new makeup of the lower house they have three more seats than the JRP — which, as you will recall, was formed just before the elections. The DPJ is one of those parties that previously were considered to have a brilliant future. Their present is bleak, and they may have no future at all. The Restoration Party has almost no past, a decent present and a promising future — provided they can hold onto it. They will be the true “second party” until the next election, although they support the victors on the major issues — nuclear power, consumption tax, the TTP and constitutional reform. I think the Democrats will start getting restless soon, and some promising politicians will defect to other parties. They can’t count on a good reception from the Liberal Democrats, but I think the Japan Restoration Party will willingly accept some.

 

The Japan Future Party belongs to the hopeless losers category (it now has 9 seats as opposed to its previous 61) — it’s a party without a future. The party that was hastily cobbled together with left-populist slogans before the elections out of “women”, “greens”, former socialists and the “Ozawa girls” — first-term members the professional dissenter took away from the DPJ last summer — proved to be nonviable despite its attempt to “ride “ the protests against a higher consumer tax, the TTP and nuclear energy. In the single-seat districts, only Ozawa was elected from its ranks, but the former “gray cardinal’s” career in big-time politics is over forever. He might well be called the “evil genius” of Japanese parties because he first took people away from the LDP, which temporarily lost its hold on power in 1993, and then from the DPJ, which lost power today, and he couldn’t get his proteges elected under his new brand.

 

The Social Democrats are also losers; they gave up 3 of their 5 seats. The Communists lost only 1 of their 9, but that’s consistent with the overall conservative victory, as is the success of the Party of All, which “put on some weight” (18 seats). Nothing needs to be said about the other small parties because nothing depends on them.

 

The Liberal Democrats are celebrating their victory, but they’ve already said their success doesn’t mean they’ve regained the public’s confidence, only that their rivals lost it. People are expecting miracles from the LDP, which ruled Japan for more than half a century — and quickly. Can its leader, Shinzo Abe, deliver?

 

Source: New Eastern Outlook