A Political Mystery

Only a few lines today due to an illness.

The other day I noted the Democratic Party of Japan boycotted a sudden emergency meeting of the Administrative Oversight Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Audit and Administrative Oversight. (Link)

The excuse the DPJ gave for boycotting this unusual out-of-Diet Session subcommittee meeting -- and for ordering ministry bureaucrats summoned to stay at their posts -- was that the party secretariat had not yet selected a Ranking Member for the subcommittee, which is chaired by a Liberal Democratic Party member.

However, the story behind the sudden call for a subcommittee hearing is not frivolous. It turns out that the supplementary budget drawn up to fund the recovery of the Tohoku region and Fukushima was crammed with pork, projects that could not be justified in the regular budget but suddenly became vital parts of the recovery effort.

The rightist press outlets have been all over this story, as can be expected. However, they have been taking their cues from the leftist and progressive press. The Tokyo Shimbun, a left-leaning paper and an avowed enemy of the Prime Minister for his having championed a rise in the consumption tax, has been plastering its front pages with nearly daily exposés of questionable items in the recovery budget, including:

- 7.2 billion, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support its Japan-East Asia/North America Network of Exchange for Students and Youths

- 2.3 billion to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, to support pelagic research whaling overseen by the Institute of Cetacean Research

- 40 billion, to the Defense Ministry, for the acquisition of fixed wing transport and cargo aircraft

- 1.2 billion to the National Tax Agency, for maintenance on 12 of their dormitories

- 330 million, to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, for earthquake retrofitting of the National Stadium in Shinjuku

- 47.7 billion to the Ministry of Infrastructure, Land, Transport and Tourism for water control projects, only 30% of which are in the disaster zone

- 3.4 billion, to MLIT, for construction of national highways in Okinawa

and in what can only be the greatest of ironies,

- 10.7 billion to MEXT for the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, an agency promoting the use of nuclear energy. The budget outlay includes 4.2 billion for Japan's continued participation in International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)

Now just why all these questionable items are becoming political hot potatoes now, as opposed to several months ago, is a mystery. Of course, the compilation of a new budget and a new recovery budget, with the ministries putting forth their requests for the next fiscal year, may have stimulated the news media to ask, "And what exactly has happened to the money you already received?"

However, how was it possible that the uncovering of all these funny budget items seems to have been left to the national broadcaster NHK (Link), the mildest-mannered of the news networks? Why was the no stink made when the recovery budget was initially compiled?

Guesses...surmises...

1) So the new media outlets could put on their best Captain Renault act (Link), shocked at what was promoted as a budget to help the Tohoku being instead a minor festival of pork barrel projects? What country do they think they are operating in?

2) The LDP, in order to force the resignation of Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, called up their contacts in the news media with juicy bits from the recovery budget's internal working documents just when the government was about to enter into delicate negotiations with the major opposition parties about the extraordinary Diet Session?

3) Prime Minister Noda and the Cabinet, after ostensibly allowing the bureaucracy to run rampant in a bid to win its loyalty, instead gave the bureaucrats enough rope to hang themselves?

I have no clue.

The DPJ Goes To The Four Corners

Yesterday, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko had a first face-to-face good-fellow-well-met confab between himself and the recently elected Liberal Democratic Party President Abe Shinzo.

By "recently elected" I mean 16 days ago.

Accompanying both men were the main members of their new party secretariats.

By "new" I mean appointed 14 days ago.

The delay in getting the two party leaderships together is understandable. Noda had to reshuffle the Cabinet: that happened on October 1st. Then the new Cabinet ministers had to get comfortable in their new chairs. Then there was the Sports Day three day weekend...

OK, so the scheduling may not have been done with any degree of expeditiousness.

However, yesterday, the two lineups of men (and yes, it was all men...sigh...is this really an advanced post-industrial society?) got together over a table and got down to work.

And, after an eventful and likely exhausting five minutes, they ended their meeting.

Prime Minister Noda, with a dramatic flourish, told Abe that the two of them really have to together soon with Yamaguchi Natsuo, the leader of the New Komeito, to discuss the extraordinary Diet session. (J)

Meanwhile, in another part of the Diet Building, six members of the Administrative Oversight Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Audit and Administrative Oversight sat twiddling their thumbs.

The six members of the subcommittee -- four from the Liberal Democratic Party, one from Ozawa Ichiro's People's Life Party and one from the New Komeito, had responded to a call from the subcommittee's chairman, a member of the LDP*, to an emergency, extra-Diet Session meeting to examine dereliction of duty in the disbursal of the funds from the supplementary budget for the recovery and reconstruction in the disaster zones of the Tohoku and Fukushima Prefecture.

The reason the six members of the subcommittee were hard at work developing their thumb muscles was that none of the eight Democratic Party of Japan members of the subcommittee showed up to the emergency meeting. Had even a single member of the DPJ showed, the committee would have had a quorum, and could set to work investigating the allegations of fraud and mismanagement. (J)

Or at least they might have tried to do so, only to be stymied by the DPJ-led government's having told the summoned relevant ministry officials not to leave their offices to appear at a meeting that was not going to happen.

The DPJ had an explanation for not responding to the chairman's call. The lengthy process of winnowing through the appointments of new senior vice ministers/state ministers and parliamentary vice-ministers after a Cabinet reshuffle had turned out to be just that, lengthy, and the DPJ secretariat had not had the time to select a new Ranking Member for the subcommittee. Without a Ranking Member how could any of the other members show up?

You know how it is...

Tick, tick, tick...

Funny thing that Abe and Yamaguchi are learning about Noda. If, following your election, or in Yamaguchi's case reelection, to the position leader of your party the first thing you promise to your followers is that you will bring them the head of the current government on a platter, that head is not terribly inclined to facilitate your delivering on that promise. Indeed, however he might not want to embarrass you in front of your peers, he has an incentive to stall, delay, prevaricate, stonewall -- all to keep his head right where it is.

Noda Yoshihiko promised the hapless former LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu in a private one-on-one meeting that in return for cooperation on the package of social welfare reforms bills including the consumption tax bill, the bond issuance bill and a bill reforming the electoral districts, he, Noda, would dissolve the Diet "soon" (chikai uchi ni).

Both Houses of the Diet passed the package of bills on social welfare reform, including the consumption tax bill.

However, when it became clear that Noda and the DPJ were stalling on the submission of the two additional bills, this in order that the two bills would fail to wend their way through the relevant Diet committees and plenary sessions before the September 8 end of the regular Diet session, Tanigaki lost his nerve. He tried, ex post facto, to get Noda to commit to a date certain for the Diet dissolution. He failed to bullrush the stolid Noda. At which point all hell broke loose: a fumbled no-confidence motion; the DPJ's ramming through the House of Representatives its versions of the two bills; the LDP voting in the House of Councillors for a motion of censure condemning its own actions; and the crashing to a halt of the House of Councillors session well before the deadline, leading to the death on the doorstep of the House of Councillors of the bond issuance and electoral reform bills.

Quite an interesting summer.

Anyway, with the two bills dead and Tanigaki gone as LDP president, the seemingly imperturbable Noda is now looking to Abe and Yamaguchi to forget all about that silly "soon" business.

As for Azumi Jun, the former minister of finance, who went about the halls of the Diet sweating and writhing throughout the month of August, it seems possible he may have lied exaggerated about the extent to which Japan faces fiscal disaster should the bond issuance bill fail to be passed this month.

Oh, the duplicitous knave -- I mean, DPJ Acting Secretary-General!

Certainly no one is doing now the panic dance he was doing just two months ago.

So what's bottom line? When will the Noda and DPJ stop their delaying tactics and start playing ball?

Oh, how Abe and Yamaguchi would love to know the answer to that question.

Perhaps they will find out when the two of them have their têtes-à-tête with the prime minister.

Sometime soon, just like he said.

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* While the committee chairs in the House of Representatives are all held by members of the ruling coalition, subcommittee chairmanships are distributed to members of the opposition out of courtesy.

Ozawa Ichiro - The Final Act

In a few hours from now, Ozawa Ichiro, after a third and final meeting Koshi'ishi Azuma, his erstwhile friend in the Democratic Party of Japan leadership, will announce what he, Ozawa, will do with his party membership credentials.

Chances are he will tear them up.

Unlike in the case of his attempt to out prime minister Kan Naoto, where Ozawa watched the no-confidence vote on a television screen from his office, Ozawa turned up in person to hand the token takers the little blue-green tablet indicating that he was voting "no" agains the pending legislation.

For Ozawa, who is usually either at his home in Setagaya-ku or on the road when the Diet is in session, and who has a history of not showing up at crucial showdowns, to actually show up and vote on legislation in defiance of the party leadership is a strong indicator that he has made up his mind to go down with his ship, one way or the other.

One can imagine the frustration of Koshi'ishi, appealing to Ozawa's considerable sense of self-protection, describing to Ozawa what his future will be should he bolt from the DPJ:

"Without the party to protect you, you will be spending the rest of your living days giving testimony to Diet committees investigating everything you have done in your entire career. Are you ready to face such a future? Are your followers? Or do you actually believe that the LDP, having joined hands with you once, leading to the circumstances contributing to the death of Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo and, out of desperation, nearly joining hands with you again until you backed out after your private deal with Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo and Watanabe Tsuneo led to your DPJ allies turning on you -- that the LDP will now join hands with you to turf out Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko and form a conservative-liberal alliance of convenience with you? Do you not understand there is no there there? Does it not enter your imagination that the LDP and the New Komeito, whom you have both jilted (in the LDP's case four times) will not take this opportunity to join hands with your new enemy the DPJ and redistrict you and all who follow you out of existence? That your newest friends like Yamada Masahiko are nihilists, with nothing to lose?"

It is tempting to believe that Ozawa, having plunged so many times deep into a pool of resolution, only to climb out at the last moment, leaving his followers wet, cold and bedraggled, might be willing try this ploy one last time -- whether or not it salvages a single line of the DPJ manifesto of 2009. It is tempting to believe that his peculiar insertion of the phrase kyoko ni ("forcibly") in his criticisms of the Noda Administration's approach toward the passing the consumption tax legislation indicates he has some flexibility toward the legislation -- that if the passage were somehow accomplished without force, that he might entertain the notion of staying in the party.

However, the indicators are not in favor of this interpretation. Ozawa showed up for a vote in the Diet: that alone is "we interrupt this program to bring you a special announcement" level news. Kyoko ni is probably just rhetoric, an appeal to swing voters who are confused about whether the imposition of the rise in the consumption tax is a good thing or a bad thing, telling these voters, "Good or bad, it was the way that Noda approached the problem that was wrong."

Clouds wreath the capital. Rain has fallen and more is threatened.

The murky beginnings of what one presumes will be a long and memorable day.

Catching Up On The News - Unconstitutional Elections

Something huge happened yesterday.

In a footnote to my post of yesterday, I noted that NHK announcer Okoshi Kensuke last Thursday confronted Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko with the bald fact that the current map of the House of Representatives districts is unconstitutional, rendering an election impossible on technical grounds. While the Prime Minister had no alternative but to concede that the current map is unconstitutional, he dodged the thrust of Okoshi's question, saying that the Diet had too many important and difficult issues before it for anyone to be discussing a dissolution and an election at this time.

Noda had been, until the live NHK interview, careful to not get cornered on the question of the constitutionality of holding an election. He had left it up to Koshi'ishi Azuma, the Democratic Party of Japan's secretary-general, to tell the seemingly bone-headed members of the political press over and over again that since the issue of the disproportionality of a single vote (ippyo no kakusa) had not been resolved in accordance with the standards set down by the Supreme Court judgment of March 2011, no House of Representatives elections could take place.

While any position aside from the one Koshi'ishi has taken is ludicrous -- unconstitutional meaning “contrary to the basic law of the land, the law upon which all other laws are based” -- Noda has been careful to preserve the notion that the holding of an election is a matter of opinion -- his opinion -- rather than a matter of law.

The reason Noda has needed to maintain this fallacy is simple: his power to call an election is the whip he needs to keep the followers of former DPJ party leader Ozawa Ichiro in line. Nothing terrifies the Ozawa-vetted first termers like the possibility being plunged into an election. With the disdain the public has at present for the DPJ and perhaps permanently for Ozawa, each and every one of these Ozawa acolytes would be wiped out.

Perversely, the opposition Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito have aided Noda in the maintenance of this illusion. The leaders of both the LDP and the New Komeito know just as well as anyone else that elections are impossible if the districts are unconstitutional. Nevertheless they have been calling for elections for two years straight. And why not? It is the biggest free lunch in history. The public opininon polls on the level of public support for the LDP and the New Komeito could find that both have 0% support and it would not matter: the two parties would still call for elections.

Noda, for his part, tacitly used opposition demands for elections as a means of bolstering the illusion he has wished to preserve. If the opposition is demanding elections, it stands to reason that the opposition at least believes elections can be held.

Hence the sound of breaking glass yesterday when LDP Secretary-General Ishihara Nobuteru asked Prime Minister Noda, in special Diet Committee session, whether in fact the failure to correct the disproportionality of votes in the electoral districts put a shackle on the right to dissolve the Diet. Noda replied that no, failure to act did not shackle the right and that elections would be held when they he thought they were needed. (J)

Technically, both men are correct. Following through on Ishihara's thought, a dissolution of the Diet would trigger the implementation of Article 54 of the Constitution, which states that following a dissolution of the Diet, an election must be held within 40 days. Since the current electoral districts have been ruled unconstitutional, and the Diet would no longer be in existence to fix them, the election would a priori be void.

As for Noda's insistence that the right to dissolve the Diet is not compromised, his position is true only via the most painstaking of hairsplitting. The right to dissolve the Diet, held by the Emperor but exercised upon the advice of the Prime Minister, is not compromised until the moment the right is exercised, at which point the country would be blasted out into extraconstitutional space.

While the constitutional implications of this conundrum are fascinating*, what was of immense political importance in Ishihara's question was that unless the LDP tries to pull off the same trick that the DPJ has been pulling -- i.e., having the party secretary-general insisting that holding a House of Representatives election is impossible while the party president maintains that it is not -- the delicate minuet Noda and the opposition have been dancing together has come to a sudden stop. If a gaggle of reporters corner LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu and press him on whether or not Ishihara's question means the LDP now believes holding elections is unconstitutional, chances are the not terribly swift-thinking Tanigaki will not have an intelligible response.

If and when Tanigaki flubs his moment in the spotlight, the political game board will become completely scrambled, just when Ozawa Ichiro, the master of Go (Part 1 and Part 2) is set to meet with the prime minister. (J)

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* The current emperor, being the conscientious, cautious but independent-thinking man that he is, would likely, on the most perfect of legal grounds, toss post-1945 precedent into the dustbin by refusing the prime minister's request for a dissolution.

The Article 51 Exemption

During the Friday's House of Councillors Budget Committee session, the first Liberal Democratic Party questioner was the painfully little-known Ishizaki Yosuke (OK, try; try to name whom he represents. See? Neither could I. I had to look it up).

Ishizaki Y. (there were, unbelievably, two LDP questioners in Friday's budget session with the surname Ishizaki) began his questions with the following speech, none of which had anything to do with the business of the day:

Last year on March 29, in a session of the Budget Committee with the purpose of reviewing what had happened, I was seated at this seat.

This was the first session of the Budget Committee after the Great Easter Japan Disaster. Prime Minister Kan and the members of the Cabinet were all in emergency disaster relief uniforms. I asked, "Was it not strange for the supreme commander of the disaster relief effort to board a helicopter for the nuclear power station? For the prime minister to go before Tokyo Electric Power Company, going about yelling at them, "What are you going to do?" I asked, "Was not the venting [of the reactor vessels] and the provision of seawater to the reactors slowed down by this?"

What I got in return was, "At at time of national crisis, to question whether or not government the government was harassing [TEPCO and its workers] -- give us a break (keshikaran)"

Yet now, a year later, if you look at the news reports of today, we have come to learn that almost everything I insisted at the time was true. [Isolated shouts]"

Uh, no. In either retractions of previous stories, reports from the news outlets contradicting their own previous assertions and from reports on the investigations of outside organizations, nearly every one of the things you asserted on that day, Senator Ishizaki, turned out to be false.

How do the members of the Diet get away with continuing to hold to positions that are demonstrably untrue? How do they get to repeat them, so that they are once again entered into the historical record?

First, no one is watching. Well, I was watching -- but what good does that do? Actually that is not true either. My old Mizuho Bank branch used to have the Diet sessions on for the edification/entertainment/sedation of their customers waiting their turns. Many municipal office waiting areas have the broadcasts on for similar reasons. So I was not exactly the only witness to Ishizaki's attempt to rerewrite history.

Second, there is the little business of Article 51 of the Constitution. What Senator Ishizaki was insisting was true was a slander of former Prime Minister Kan Naoto. Even though it was not in his initial slanderous remarks, Ishizaki went on later to implicate and by doing so slander the then Chief Cabinet Minister, now Minister of Economics, Trade and Industry Edano Yukio, seated not four meters away.

What could Edano or Kan do to stop Ishizaki from perpetuating lies and damaging their reputations? Absolutely nothing. It was his Diet time, in which he can say any damn thing about any damn citizen he chooses, because, under Article 51:

Members of both Houses shall not be held liable outside the House for speeches, debates or votes cast inside the House.

Unless his own colleagues censure or expel him, a costly process in terms of political capital and time, he is going to have a lectern at which he can spew outrageous (keshikaran) calumnies forever.

Ishizaki Y. is truly blessed. Contrary to the adage, he can have not only his own opinions but his own facts.

For the video of the session, click here, and do a little digging.

Why He Doesn't Just Do It

One of the questions frequently asked about the Ozawa Ichiro situation is why, if he is as clean (keppaku) as he claims he is, does he not go before the Diet, either in camera in the Ethics Committee or before the cameras in sworn testimony, to tell his side of the story. For some, this reticence is evidence that he is indeed hiding something (en) -- that he is afraid something will pop out under the pressure of questions from the opposition.

I can think of one other reason why Ozawa Ichiro would see little reason for his appearing in the Diet: it benefits his rivals in the party. As long as he is around but not saying anything, the party's image gets tarnished and his rivals, who are the ones in control of the party and the government, struggle to get anything done. If he talks, no matter the outcome -- i.e., the testimony finds Ozawa without fault, finds him rife with inconsistencies or finds the smoking gun -- his rivals benefit, the cloud having been lifted off the party.

Put yourself in Ozawa's position. Given the chance that something heretofore ignored might suddenly come to the fore or that the only ones who really benefit from your testimony are your rivals in the party, would you testify?

As for Ozawa's attitude problem, as was demonstrated in his responses to questions at his press conference of October 6, the simplest explanation is that he is a certain part of the male anatomy. Whether he is congenitally a certain part of the male anatomy, or came to develop his certain part of the male anatomynishness under the tutelage of Tanaka Kakuei and Kanemaru Shin, both of whose certain part of the male anatomynishness was truly epic, or that his having to pass kidney stones (en) plays a part, the result is disastrous for his public image, no matter the merits of the case against him.

There May Be Differences After All

Under the cabinets of Koizumi Jun'ichiro and Abe Shinzo, the Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition government was in the position the current Democratic Party of Japan-led coalition finds itself: in possession of majorities in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. During the first 10 months of the Abe Cabinet at least, the then opposition parties screamed in impotent rage as the LDP-led coalition railroaded every bill through committee and then through the full Houses with little or no debate.

Today the House of Representatives will pass the 2010 budget, the first budget compiled under the DPJ's radically new politician-led compilation process. Despite the purported revolutionary in the way this bill has been drafted, we have not heard the slightest whimper of complaint about the DPJ-led coalition's management of the committee debates over it. Indeed, none of the opposition parties have made a single complaint about the DPJ-led coalition's management of the debates over any bill currently under consideration.

Either the LDP and the New Komeito do not know (and the Communists have forgotten) how to complain about the way the committee meetings are being run or there is nothing about the way the committee chairmen are running their committees that merit complaint.

Or so it seems...