With the economy under duress and the administration of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto under fire, the future of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party should be in doubt.
Yet as Japan heads to the polls Sunday for a midterm election, the question is not how badly the LDP might stumble, but how well it might do.
The election will not determine Japan’s government. That is decided by the makeup of the lower house. Instead, Sunday’s vote for the upper house is viewed as a referendum on the LDP’s economic recovery plan and on the political future of the prime minister.
A senior LDP official conceded Friday that there appears to be little chance that Hashimoto’s party can win enough seats in the upper house of parliament to recapture a majority lost nine years ago.
Just last week, LDP lawmakers boldly predicted their party would win 69 of the 126 seats. That’s the number the LDP would need to gain control of the chamber for the first time since 1989.
But on Friday, LDP Secretary General Koichi Kato said his party would be happy to hold onto its current 61 seats.
Hashimoto is possibly the least popular politician in Japan these days, while the most popular figure is Naoto Kan, the leader of a newly formed opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan.
But media polls show the Democratic Party taking only 18 seats in the election, which will determine half of the upper house of parliament. The LDP probably will not gain the eight seats it would need for a majority, but it is expected in most polls to retain the 61 seats currently it holds, and perhaps add one or two. Some polls show the LDP losing two seats at most.
If the LDP does unexpectedly poorly and loses several seats, factions within the party could try to maneuver to replace Hashimoto as party leader and prime minister. Analysts say that an LDP defeat accompanied by Hashimoto’s resignation probably would cause some short-term turmoil in financial markets, but it would be unlikely to upset the pace of economic recovery and reform or otherwise send Japan on a different path.
What is most remarkable about the election is the ability of the LDP to endure even as the country suffers. It has ruled Japan for all but two years in the post-World War II era and has such a broad power base that it does not need to worry about being wedded to a political philosophy. It can shift from the center to the right or left as necessary, all but blotting out attempts by challengers to offer a viable alternative.
“The LDP isn’t a party of policy, it’s a party whose primary function is to get re-elected, and they will adopt whatever policies they have to in order to do that,” said John Neuffer, a political analyst at the Mitsui Marine Research Institute. “That means that if the LDP is messing up–not giving big enough tax cuts, while the opposition is saying that we need tax cuts–the LDP can say, `Oh, maybe we need tax cuts,’ and totally undermine the opposition. That’s what the LDP has done since the end of the war.”
That scenario played out in the past several days. As the Democratic Party of Japan tried to gain momentum calling for permanent income tax cuts to stimulate growth, the LDP fretted about its policy stance, which called for fiscal restraint to reduce a budget deficit.
But after several days of hesitating and sending mixed messages, Hashimoto stole the Democrats’ thunder Wednesday–four days before the election–by announcing that the government would pursue permanent tax cuts for next year.
Hashimoto’s main campaign strategy is to argue that the country needs stability as it tries to find its way back from the edge. The LDP’s power lets it get away with that kind of lackluster message. It is a massive, well-oiled political machine with close ties to the construction industry, big business and rural areas where the voting turnout is higher and parliamentary seats are elected from much smaller constituencies than in cities.
One of the main elements of the LDP’s economic recovery plan is a $12 billion stimulus package focused on public works spending, which will benefit the construction industry and rural areas that rely on government pork because there is little manufacturing. Both factors help assure support for the party.
Since 1993, when factions of the LDP split off and the party temporarily lost power, there have been several attempts by challengers to create a credible opposition, but they have all splintered and failed. The best-organized opposition party at the moment is the Communist Party, which has a core of supporters and gets a significant percent of protest votes but is not popular enough to seriously challenge the LDP.
The latest attempt to create a formidable opposition is the Democratic Party of Japan, an amalgamation of disaffected LDP politicians and others trying to hitch their star to Kan, a former consumer advocate who made his name while health minister in a coalition Cabinet. Kan acknowledged the government’s responsibility in allowing blood products tainted by HIV in the early 1980s to be distributed to hemophiliacs.
On a blistering hot afternoon in suburban Tokyo, where Kan gave a speech outside a train station from the top of a sound truck, he had plenty of ammunition to attack the LDP. He played up his background as a crusader, and accused the ruling party of destroying the economy.
Japan today, he said, is like the Titanic. “We can see the iceberg, but they can’t react and we’re all going to sink.”
