Japan heading for two-party system

Richard Smart

The voters have spoken, and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been ousted in favour of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). But now a relatively young political organization has the task of attempting to govern a country crippled by an economic crisis and the grayest population on the planet.

Final count from TV Asahi showed the DPJ won 308 seats out of the total of 480, compared with the LDP’s 119.

In its manifesto, DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama says he wishes to build “a society where each and every person’s life matters, a society in which people view others’ happiness as their own.” This task will be easier said than done, though for the first time, Japan seems to be on the road to a two-party system.

While the LDP is projected to suffer devastating losses, and is likely to win around 100 seats, it will likely remain the opposition, and will have an opportunity to make up ground next summer.

Two party system?

“It’s far too soon to write the obituary for the LDP,” says Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo. “I think that voters are fickle and their party loyalty is very fluid at the moment. The biggest reason not to assume that suddenly the DPJ is going to become the dominant party is that if you look at the polls, clearly people are voting for change for leader they don’t like that much.”

During the election campaign, while Aso and the LDP experienced huge disapproval ratings, a few were willing to say that they had faith that the DPJ would be able to deliver on the promises it made in its manifesto. A lot of voters interviewed by Xinhua on Sunday also expressed hesitation.

Proving that the DPJ can make good on at least some of its promises will be the main goal for the DPJ in its first months in power. “Given that a lot of people have been disappointed by the LDP Government of the past several years, it would be nice to see some of the DPJ campaign promises come true, sooner rather than later,” says Koichi Nakano, a professor of politics at Sophia University.

Nakano, however, does see serious risks for the DPJ over the next year. “The worst case scenario is for the DPJ to start to fall apart, even after they come to power, and that’s not entirely impossible given that there is an upper house election coming next year, which will be very important.

“It is conceivable that some of the groups within the DPJ, based on party differences, will want to pull the party this way rather than that way. But a party political re-alignment would not be a good idea as it would be tantamount to betraying the voters.”

The puppet master?

Much has been made of the role that Ozawa will play once the DPJ settles into its new role as the governing party. As the leader of the Isshin-kai, the largest faction of politicians within the DPJ, Ozawa, so the argument goes, may be able to wield more influence than Hatoyama.

Critics have also pointed to Ozawa’s skill for making backroom deals, seen in 2007 when he discussed a deal with then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to create a grand coalition including both the DPJ and LDP, as further evidence that Ozawa may possess more power than he should.

Ozawa dismissed these claims and called the ideas “made up by the media” at a news conference on Sunday.

Nakano, however, disagrees with the view that Ozawa will hold all the cards, though he does believe he will wield some power.

“ Given that Ozawa is engineering the campaign, and has been for a couple of years now, he is likely to come out of a good electoral victory powerful,” he says.

“This is not to say that Ozawa is the puppet master and Hatoyama the puppet, given that the DPJ has been run by a collective leadership rather than a one man show already for some time, and the division of labour is such that already Ozawa has been entrusted to the electoral campaign and the running of the pa

rty, at least for now.”

Observers and voters alike, however, will be watching Ozawa’s moves very closely over the coming months.

Along with Ozawa, senior positions are also expected to go to Naoto Kan and Katsuya Okada, other senior figures who have been instrumental in steering the party to power over the last few years.

What happens to the LDP?

Having suffered a humiliating defeat, it is likely that the LDP will be in turmoil for a few weeks. However, once the dust settles, what shape will the party take?

Aso stated on Sunday that he would take responsibility for the defeat, and so it is all but certain that he will not be the leader of the party. A number of senior party figures also lost their seats, including former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, meaning the LDP will have fewer reputable politicians to choose from to take senior posts.

“The LDP is running out of political talents. They may come out with a stop-gap leader until they can put things back together again,” says Nakano.

“Or they may come up with someone rather unexpected and surprising. One of the names mentioned as a possible leader at the moment is (Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Yoichi) Masuzoe, who isn’t even a member of the lower house, he’s in the upper house. That would be quite a novelty for a major party leader.”

Temple University’s Kingston, however, rang a positive note about the future for the party.

“The LDP will be what an opposition party should be. They will scrutinize the policies of the ruling party and call them out when they disagree. I think that is what is valuable in a democracy, is to have an opposition that opposes.”

Hidden treasure?

How effectively it can do this will likely be based on a number of factors: the policies the DPJ implements, the state of the economy and how individuals in the DPJ handle public scrutiny to name a few.

The main aim of the DPJ has been to eliminate wasteful spending that it believes there is plenty of within the LDP budget and to create a more effective style of governance in which bureaucrats answer to the Government, not the other way around.

There is however, a lot of doubt that the DPJ’s estimates in its manifesto it states it aims to free up trillions of yen are unrealistic.

“I would imagine the DPJ budget is somewhat overly optimistic and so criticism directed to the DPJ on that front is mostly justified,” says Nakano.

Kingston agrees: “I do not doubt for a moment that there is a vast amount of wasteful spending. There is a lot of fat to trim. I don’t believe there is as much as the DPJ claims, I don’t think they will find enough to cover their spending bills.”

Both agree that this will likely lead to a reallocation of spending from public-works projects and into social-welfare programs. “It will likely be welcomed if the DPJ reviews the spending priorities of the Government,” Nakano says.

While short-term support for this is likely, what this will mean for Japan in the long term is a question that is more difficult to answer, and the DPJ’s manifesto provides few answers. It states that money will be allocated to local governments to spend as they please, and pledges to decentralize decision-making, but there is a lack of details in this area that will take years, not months to work out.

The same could be said of the plan to take power from the bureaucrats, long the staple of Japanese politics.

As Kingston points out: “Maybe the LDP will make up ground in the upper house elections next year, after all, the party is handing the DPJ a poison chalice with the economy in trouble.

If the DPJ doesn’t turn the economy around, voters could turn against it in the upper house elections. We could end up with another divided Parliament.”

Xinhua