The Big Question: Why is Japan's leader on the ropes, and where does it leave his country? future?
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
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Why are we asking this now?
Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has just led his party, the conservative Liberal Democrats (LDP), to one of its worst electoral drubbings in half a century. The party lost 27 seats in Sunday's national upper house elections, narrowly avoiding its poorest upper house result in 1989. Even with coalition partner, New Komeito, the ruling bloc fell well short of the 64 seats it needed to hold on to the chamber, which is now controlled for the first time by the main opposition, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
Most people, even Mr Abe, agree that he is responsible for this electoral catastrophe. In the 10 months since he took office, the 52-year-old leader has seen the resignation of three cabinet ministers and presided over a steady stream of corruption scandals and ministerial gaffes.
His biggest political mistake, however, in a country with the fastest aging population in the world, was failing to deal quickly enough with a public pensions fiasco that saw government offices lose millions of pension records. Distracted by weighty constitutional issues, Mr. Abe ignored that problem until it was too late, allowing the DPJ to make political hay.
Why was Abe's defeat so significant?
This was the man born to rule; a blue-blooded heir to a political dynasty that includes his grandfather, ex-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, one of the founders of the LDP. Last September, Mr Abe was handpicked to take over the top job by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, another third-generation conservative politician and one of Japan's most successful post-war leaders. Party elders thought the LDP, which has ruled Japan almost continually since the mid-1950s, was in safe hands, and have been stunned to learn this weekend that many voters consider him dithering, weak and too arrogant to bother with bread-and-butter issues such as pensions and the emptying countryside.
Who is Abe and what does he stand for?
The Prime Minister may be Japan's most ideologically driven post-war leader, a radical conservative with two policy obsessions: rewriting Japan's record in the Second World War, renouncing constitution and reforming the education system. These issues have been on the LDP wish list since 1955 and, indeed, were among the key reasons for the foundation of the party that year by a group of conservative powerbrokers, including his grandfather.
After he took power, Mr Abe said he wanted to create a "beautiful Japan" and help recover the country's pride. His reform mission included "rescuing young people who have no dreams", code for reintroducing patriotism into the nation's schools.
As a rising political star, Mr Abe made his name rattling sabres across the Japan Sea at Pyongyang. He also chaired a group of right-wing policymakers who wanted to revise high-school textbooks and delete references to Second World War war crimes by the Japanese military. He was at the centre of a censorship scandal when he admitted leaning on Japan's state broadcaster, NHK, to change a 2001 documentary on wartime "comfort women": sex slaves abducted by the military from Korea and other countries.
What do his critics and supporters say?
Under pressure from LDP and hawks in the US administration, who want Japan to play a larger military role in Asia, the Prime Minister has laid the groundwork for a constitutional referendum on Article Nine, which allows Japan to maintain "Self-Defence Forces" but not an "army".
The document, which Mr Abe calls a degrading "signed deed of apology", has always sat uneasily with Japanese conservatives. Mr Abe's supporters say that whatever his failings, he has finally dragged Japan out of its Cold War bubble and into the 21st century; his critics accuse him of laying the groundwork for the re-emergence of Japan as a major military power.
What does the party do now?
The drubbing has wrecked Mr Abe's dream of amending the constitution, which needs both houses of parliament onside, and could stall the government's entire agenda. But the ruling coalition still has a comfortable majority in the more powerful lower house and does not have to call a general election until 2009. Party elders, including key faction leader and former Prime Minister Yoshio Mori, must decide if they can wait until then to see whether Mr Abe can somehow turn the fortunes of his government around with a promised cabinet reshuffle.
The odds are against it: his predecessors, Sosuke Uno and Ryutaro Hashimoto, both resigned after similar electoral beatings in 1989 and 1998 respectively, and several national newspapers have already called for him to step down. The problem for the LDP is: who will take over? A couple of men have been tipped to take Mr Abe's place, including Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki. But after that, the party leadership well starts to run dry.
So is this the end of an era in Japanese politics?
Perhaps. Eleven years after it was set up, the DPJ has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in Japanese politics, although nobody knows how it will perform in power. The party is a motley crew of Liberal Democrat discontents, conservatives and independents and unlikely to prove a radical break with the past, while the left-wing parties (socialists and communists) fared badly.
The LDP has been on the ropes before and always managed to survive, but there are signs in this election that the opposition made serious inroads into the LDP's rural base, capitalising on the impression among farmers that the Liberal Democrats no longer care about them. The DPJ will try its best to build on that support and force the government from power in a lower house general election. That would be a major change in Japanese politics.
Why should these events matter to the rest of the world?
An end to LDP rule in Japan would be a major breath of fresh air, shaking up the so-called iron-triangle of politicians, business and bureaucracy that has dominated life here for half a century. The change could signal a power shift from the conservative rural to urban areas, with enormous implications for Japan's relationship with Europe and the US. In the short term, Mr Abe's defeat has dashed his dream of deepening collective defence with the US military. The DPJ bigwig Yukio Hatoyama has already promised that his party will put the brakes on co-operation with US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Should Abe resign now?
Yes...
* In their first chance to do so, the people have punished Mr Abe for ignoring popular concerns to pursue his own agenda
* Short of a political miracle, the Prime Minister has no chance of recovering the respect of the electorate or the support of his peers
* Refusing to step down would paralyse the government and destabilise the world's second-largest economy
No...
* The Prime Minister has a busy summer schedule, including several important foreign trips
* Resigning would, in his words, create 'a political vacuum', and nobody in the LDP wants to take his place
* His resignation would likely set back for years radical constitutional change
