Anyone heard anything from Sentaku recently, the non-partisan political movement that was to reform Japanese politics from the ground up, giving people a real choice?
Me neither.
Later - Yes, I can see that Kitagawa Masayasu had a twenty-nine minute long meeting with the Prime Minister last Tuesday. However, that meeting was about cleaning up the environment (Environment Minister Kamoshita Ichirō sat in on the meeting) -- nothing about cleaning up politics
Showing posts with label Sentaku. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sentaku. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
The Choice
Over at GlobalTalk 21, Okumura Jun explores the Sentaku movement in detail.
I would only wish to underline two points touched upon in Okumura-san's impressive review of the goals and attributes of this two-headed (local government and central government) political reform organization.
The first is the existential point: if local government officials and the younger generation of Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan members in the Diet feel it necessary to form an organization that has a goal of pressuring the party leadership to produce meaningful policy manifestos--then local government officials and the younger generation of LDP and DPJ members have no confidence in the standard operating procedures of the parties as regards the production of meaningful manifestos.
Manifestos, yes...meaningful ones, no.
As for what "meaningful" might mean in a concrete sense, it probably means (gosh I hope it does) manifestos that recognize the necessity for tradeoffs and sacrifice--that do not, as the famous joke about the idiot manager's recommendation says, "focus our attention and energy across the board."
The second point is regarding the relative youth of the participants. While the principle of "the lower the number of elections to the Diet, the more untainted the politician" may be a good rule of thumb (depressing as it may be) such a rule may not hold up under scrutiny. Unless the Sentaku membership declares in advance from what pedestal it intends to address the excluded elder statesmen of both the major parties, I do not predict respect from the press.
I would only wish to underline two points touched upon in Okumura-san's impressive review of the goals and attributes of this two-headed (local government and central government) political reform organization.
The first is the existential point: if local government officials and the younger generation of Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan members in the Diet feel it necessary to form an organization that has a goal of pressuring the party leadership to produce meaningful policy manifestos--then local government officials and the younger generation of LDP and DPJ members have no confidence in the standard operating procedures of the parties as regards the production of meaningful manifestos.
Manifestos, yes...meaningful ones, no.
As for what "meaningful" might mean in a concrete sense, it probably means (gosh I hope it does) manifestos that recognize the necessity for tradeoffs and sacrifice--that do not, as the famous joke about the idiot manager's recommendation says, "focus our attention and energy across the board."
The second point is regarding the relative youth of the participants. While the principle of "the lower the number of elections to the Diet, the more untainted the politician" may be a good rule of thumb (depressing as it may be) such a rule may not hold up under scrutiny. Unless the Sentaku membership declares in advance from what pedestal it intends to address the excluded elder statesmen of both the major parties, I do not predict respect from the press.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Jump clear of plane, pull ripcord
Aside from being members of the Diet, what do Shimamuro Hakubun, Obuchi Yūko, Kosaka Kenji, Okada Katsuya, Kawaguchi Yoriko, Matsubara Jin, Hashimoto Taku, Ōsaka Seiji, Seko Hiroshige, Katayama Satsuki, Itokawa Masaaki, Noda Seiko and Ishihara Nobuteru have in commmon?
Nothing that I can tell...except that they all were in attendance today when the non-partisan political group Sentaku held its first meeting for interested Diet members.
Here is the list of the 107 attendees.
In attendance were:
51 Diet members from the LDP
47 from the DPJ
8 from the Komeito
1 from the Japan New Party
The attendees each knew why he or she was at the meeting. Unfortunately, as they looked around the room, they were probably wondering what the heck all these other Diet members were doing at the meeting.
If a word describes the membership of this club, "exclusive" is not it.
To be fair, a glance at the list reveals some patterns. The attendees listed tend toward the younger end of the political scale, with most of those in attendance in their fifties and forties. Very few attendees seem to be from the party bloc seats--which make sense as the Diet members from the blocs owe their seats to their party affiliation...and folks who owe their seats to their parties would be pushing the envelope if they were to be seen actively participating in a non-partisan group whose purpose is to "cleanse" (sentaku - 洗濯) politics and offer real "choice" (sentaku - 選択）。
The number of inherited seatholders--members who can hold on to their seats whether the leadership likes them or not--seems also fairly heavy.
Now I must confess...I have had the hardest time taking seriously a political movement whose name is a pun...or at least a tortured homophone. I must admit this first meeting was rather well attended.
Let us see how they do with the next one.
On the 9 p.m. NHK News, after the report on the meeting, the anchor asked her co-anchor, "All these cross-party study groups and associations forming, what could it mean?"
Normally, this is the co-anchor's cue to explain the world for us stupid people...but unbelievably, he did not answer the question.
He just let it hang there in the void.
A rhetorical question? On NHK? Could it be possible?
Nothing that I can tell...except that they all were in attendance today when the non-partisan political group Sentaku held its first meeting for interested Diet members.
Here is the list of the 107 attendees.
In attendance were:
51 Diet members from the LDP
47 from the DPJ
8 from the Komeito
1 from the Japan New Party
The attendees each knew why he or she was at the meeting. Unfortunately, as they looked around the room, they were probably wondering what the heck all these other Diet members were doing at the meeting.
If a word describes the membership of this club, "exclusive" is not it.
To be fair, a glance at the list reveals some patterns. The attendees listed tend toward the younger end of the political scale, with most of those in attendance in their fifties and forties. Very few attendees seem to be from the party bloc seats--which make sense as the Diet members from the blocs owe their seats to their party affiliation...and folks who owe their seats to their parties would be pushing the envelope if they were to be seen actively participating in a non-partisan group whose purpose is to "cleanse" (sentaku - 洗濯) politics and offer real "choice" (sentaku - 選択）。
The number of inherited seatholders--members who can hold on to their seats whether the leadership likes them or not--seems also fairly heavy.
Now I must confess...I have had the hardest time taking seriously a political movement whose name is a pun...or at least a tortured homophone. I must admit this first meeting was rather well attended.
Let us see how they do with the next one.
On the 9 p.m. NHK News, after the report on the meeting, the anchor asked her co-anchor, "All these cross-party study groups and associations forming, what could it mean?"
Normally, this is the co-anchor's cue to explain the world for us stupid people...but unbelievably, he did not answer the question.
He just let it hang there in the void.
A rhetorical question? On NHK? Could it be possible?
Labels:
legacy Diet members,
realignment,
Seko Hiroshige,
Sentaku
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