About That Revolution You Are Fearing

The insurgency began
And you missed it...

- REM, Begin the Begin (1986)

On April March 15, this summer's House of Councillors election became irrelevant. On that Friday, the House of Councillors approved, with coalitions shifting on every vote, the appointments of Kuroda Haruhiko as Governor of the Bank of Japan and Iwata Kikuo and Nakaso Hiroshi as deputy governors.

With these nods, the House of Councillors ceased to have a part to play in governing Japan. High appointments are the only matters requiring the approval of both Houses of the Diet. All other governance issues can pass into law via the supermajority the ruling Liberal Democratic Party/New Komeito coalition holds in the House of Representatives.

The only function the House of Councillors now serves is as a brake upon constitutional revision. The LDP and the Japan Restoration Association will be campaigning hard on the issue of revision in July. However, it is impossible for the two parties to win the necessary 2/3rds of the seats in the House of Councillors.

The existing state of legislative tyranny creates the conditions for some strange requests. Last week, Prime Minister Abe had a meeting with Osaka City mayor and JRA co-leader Hashimoto Toru at the Prime Minister’s Residence. In the course of the meeting, the prime minister asked Hashimoto for JRA support of the government’s budget, stating:

"If the JRA supports the budget bill, we will earn the public’s approval, even if the bill is rejected by the House of Councillors and has to be passed using the override."

(Link - J video)

Put into less convoluted terms, the prime minister's request reads, "We are going to pass the budget using our 2/3rds majority in the House of Representatives if the House of Councillors rejects it. Can you provide the political cover for our steamrolling of the legislation?"

What is the really weird part about Abe's gambit? Not that Abe is asking the Hashist to provide a fig leaf for the ruling coalition's naked use of power. No, what is weird is that under Article 60 of the Constitution, the passage of a budget does not require an override – the budget becomes law effective 30 days after the House of Representatives gives its approval, no matter what.

True, Abe could be talking about the full package of the budget and its enabling legislation, particularly the bond issuance bills to which Democratic Party of Japan prime ministers Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko both had to sacrifice their premierships. Passing the enabling legislation will require the approval of both Houses, and barring the approval of the House of Councillors, the use of the 2/3rds override majority in the House of Representatives.

Of course, that Abe even asked Hashimoto for cover reveals an interesting lack of self-confidence on the part of the prime minister and his party. This could be because the use of the override is constitutionally suspect, the product of the LDP's and the New Komeito's margin of victory in the tainted December 2012 election.

However, reticence toward use of the override extends back before the courts made clear their disgust with the inequalities of the House of Representatives voting districts. Back in 2007-08, prime minister Fukuda Yasuo and the LDP embarrassed themselves repeatedly by failing to use the override majority to keep vital pieces of legislation from becoming defunct.

Some have argued a cultural distaste for the bald use of constitutional powers. Such a proclivity may indeed exists.

A self-interest explanation for earlier restraint would be that the smart elements of the LDP sensed that the party could not use the override without triggering questions about the legitimacy of House of Representatives elections. Had earlier LDP governments used supermajorities again and again to railroad controversial or blatantly self-serving legislation through the Diet, the courts might have stepped in earlier to rectify imbalances in the sizes of the districts -- something the LDP really wanted to avoid.

Later - Thanks to reader PW for alerting me to the error in the first line.

We Will Defy Reality

On Sunday's premier talk show, NHK's Nichiyo Toron, Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru defended his party's two plans for reforming the House of Representatives: the first being a new electoral map subtracting five district seats from the House membership (Link) and the second a cut of 30 proportional seats in tandem with a bewildering new system of handing out proportional seats to be bolted on atop the existing system.

As for the attack, it came from an Democratic Party of Japan Secretary-General Hosono Goshi, joining the conversation via video link. Eyes strangely bloodshot, Hosono did little more than read from the decisions of the various high courts around the country finding the December 2012 elections unconstitutional. His message was simple: the bills the LDP and its ally the New Komeito are proposing do not answer the requests the courts have made as regards reform of the way the House of Representatives is selected.

[And what are we to make of a Nichiyo Toron debate between only the secretary-generals of the LDP and the DPJ? Should not the Japan Renewal Party's secretary-general been there too, via video-link, at the very least? The JRP was, after all, the #2 vote winner in the 2012 House of Representatives election. What prompted NHK to abandon its practice of inviting speakers from every party, no matter how small that party's Diet membership?]

Ishiba's response to Hosono's gentle hammering was stunning: the LDP and the New Komeito would pass the electoral reform bills, even if the House of Councillors voted against them. The ruling coalition would use its supermajority to override the upper house’s rejection . (Link – J)

There is defiance – and there is nuts. Ishiba's threat edges into the latter territory.

The ruling coalition's first problem would be the use of a House of Representatives supermajority to overturn a decision of the House of Councillors. Over the last three weeks of March, 14 of 16 high courts ruled that the December 2012 House of Representatives elections were unconstitutional. The two remaining courts found that the elections were conducted in "a state of unconstitutionality." The authority and legitimacy of the House of Representatives are thus suspect.

Second, when the Council on House of Representatives Electoral Districts handed its new electoral map to the government, not even national broadcaster NHK could restrain itself from pronouncing the plan dead on arrival. After a segment on the ceremony handing over the new map to the government (Link), including a dutiful explanation of the way the Council reduced the difference between the number of voters in the largest district and the smallest district to 1.998 -- a hair under the Supreme Court mandated constitutional limit of 2.0 -- announcer Inoue Asahi, in a devastating hand-off, sighed to her co-announcer Ogoshi Kensuke, "With a continuing shifts of population, the difference will rise above 2.0 in very little time, sending us right back into a state of unconstitutionality."

Inoue, it turns out, was being more than prophetic. The Sankei Shimbun, not by any means an enemy of the LDP, has checked the population numbers of the districts against the new council map, using the municipal population figures from January 2013. The Sankei's findings: of the ten largest population districts on the new map, eight are already above the 2.0 limit. (Link – J)

While it is true that the law only requires the council on electoral districts to have its map conform to population distributions as reflected in the decennial census (the last of which was conducted in October 2010) -- that the map is already in a de facto state of unconstitutionality means the council performed its duties in only the most perfunctory way.

If the LDP and the New Komeito want the Supreme Court to defer to the elected branch of government on matters of the constitutionality of the districts, then swearing to pass the pseudo-reform bills over the expressed objection of the properly elected House of Councillors is a hell of a way of displaying the magnanimity, graciousness and humility the Supreme Court will be looking for in return for its own surrender of its unquestionable authority over these matters (Article 81, Constitution of Japan).


Later - The Mainichi checks in with an English language account of Ishiba's stunning threat to pass the bill through a House of Representatives override. (Link)

I Am the Voice of the Zaikai...Pay Heed To Me

"I find you unworthy."

I had though that yesterday morning's rushed Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) endorsing the Prime Minister's plan to have the proceeds from gasoline taxes shifted from road construction to the general fund in 2009 would supply sufficient political cover for the ruling coalition as it used its two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives to override the House of Councillors's rejection of the 10 year, 59 trillion yen road construction bill.

Evidently the editors of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the readers and leaders of conservative corporate opinion (and no friends of the Democratic Party of Japan, believe you me) were nevertheless unimpressed by the Cabinet's tail-covering exercise:

A spineless conversion to the general fund is impermissible
May 14, 2008

The Road Financing Special Measures bill, which retains for 10 years the special tax revenues for road construction, has been passed by the House of Representatives through use of the two-thirds majority. It has now become law. The law clearly contradicts the stated policy of Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo who promises to switch the full amount to general fund in fiscal year 2009. Having forcibly passed a bill as is without correcting it is deplorable...

The Prime Minister and the Cabinet were all smiles after the override vote...but with every victory, this impatient and innumerate ruling coalition loses more and more support.

What drives them to win the battles but lose the war?

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

In the first panel of the cartoon Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo, clad in tennis wear, is preparing to serve. From outside the panel come catcalls and taunts. "Go ahead, show us what you've got! C'mon, you aren't scaring anybody."

Fukuda rears back, tosses the ball in the air, and unleashes a terrific serve.

The ball come zinging back at him as if on fire. He only just ducks down in time.

The catcalls continue, "Oh, that was brilliant! Why don't you try it again?"

Fukuda again rears back, launching an even more powerful serve.

The ball comes sizzling back, clocking Fukuda in the forehead and knocking his glasses askew.

"Whooopeee! Come on, serve it for real this time! Hit it with all you've got!"

Readjusting his somewhat bent glasses, and wiping the sweat from his forehead, Fukuda rears back even further and unleashes a monstrous serve--that comes back like a bullet, knocking him to the ground.

It is then that the frame pulls back, revealing the whole tennis court. Ozawa Ichirō, Hatoyama Yukio and Kan Naoto are all on the other side of the net, their rackets down by their sides, shouting encouragement to the PM. Ozawa leads the jeers, yelling, "Oh, please, please; one more time. That was awesome...of course, whenever you're ready to stop serving against the back wall and instead hit a ball in our direction, that would be great too!"

* * *

One would think that after all the self-inflicted wounds and humiliations over the last few months, the PM and the ruling coalition would have learned a simple lesson: get the ball out of your side of the court. For every issue, the PM and the ruling coalition have found themselves incapable of getting the ball to drop in the Democratic Party of Japan's side, forcing the DPJ and its leaders to actually do something other than just stand around shouting imprecations.

Unbelievably, it is about to happen again. On May 12, the sixty day limit on the road construction bill will expire. It will become possible for the ruling coalition to pass the bill using its two thirds majority in the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately the road construction bill coming up for override is not the road construction bill the Fukuda government wants. The bill that is up for reapproval is a public relations nightmare, an execrable promise of a decade-long matsuri of pork.

"But you know," the DPJ is saying with a huge grin on its face, "You guys passed it once already. Two months ago you thought this was an absolutely fabulous, absolutely essential bill. And you voted for it. Surely you could not have changed your minds about this bill in just two months! That would be irresponsible and unserious--and you are the serious, responsible party! Everyone knows that. So override. Pass this monstrous bill. We dare you. We double dare you."

And the PM and the ruling coalition leadership are simply stunned. They launched a laughingstock of a bill--an absurdity--over to the opposition-led House of Councillors, daring them to leave it alone--only to see their own howling creation land right at their feet, untouched and unchanged, for them to either reject (and won't that look smart--voting for a bill only to reject it only two months later) or pass using the override provision, inviting the public to go ballistic with righteous indignation.

Leaving the PM and the leadership to wonder, "How is it possible the ball is back in our court, AGAIN?"

Funny things happen when you don't play with others, choosing instead to play with yourself.


Later - We may be looking at game, set and match.

Tobias Harris notes that a snap poll by The Asahi Shimbun finds the Fukuda Cabinet's support level at a mere 20%.

Now the Tokyo Shimbun has come out with a rival poll finding support for the Cabinet at 19.8%--which, the paper, bless its leftist little heart, is calling "a support level of only 19%".

Guess folks might be upset that gasoline station owners raised prices a nice round 30 yen per liter yesterday?

(No, no, it is not price gouging to raise fuel prices 30 yen per liter during Golden Week when the tax being revived is only 25 yen per liter. Perish the thought.)

Alls Hell That Starts In Disarray

Once again without a single non-Communist member of the opposition in the chamber, the LDP-New Komeitō ruling coalition has used its supermajority in the House of Representatives to vote for a revival of the temporary gasoline levy.

One cannot imagine that the scenes of gasoline distributorships shutting down mid-afternoon in response to the vote in the House of Representatives will play too well on the late night, non-NHK networks--nor that the new, higher prices tomorrow will be greeted with cheers from the public.

So where do we go from here?

Not to censure, at least not immediately.

Ozawa Ichirō has moved his marker regarding the possibility of the House of Councillors censuring the Prime Minister. Rather than censure the PM for using an Article 59 override to force a reapplication of the temporary gasoline levy, Ozawa will be "keeping an eye on the road construction bill" -- i.e., the 10 year, 59 trillion yen, truly grotesque testing of the public's patience that is the next bill up for the override treatment.

The PM has promised to put the revenues from the gasoline tax go into the general fund as of next year. Unfortunately, the PM's wish is not included in the current language of the road construction bill.

This would seem to create an interesting procedural mess.

Opening up the road construction bill and rewriting it in joint committee would be one solution. Unfortunately, convening an interparliamentary committee it is not possible without at least a sister bill having been passed by the House of Councillors.

That has not happened. It will not happen.

Alteration of the legislation already passed by the House of Representatives will be, in terms of the rules, the submission of a brand new bill.

However, unless the House of Representatives votes down its own 10 year, 59 trillion bill first, the House of Representatives will be on record--as far as I can tell--as having sent to the House of Councillors two mutually contradictory bills on a single subject.

Not exactly a place where anyone wants to be.

Submitting a bill reflecting the Prime Minister's plan to move revenues to the general fund--i.e., a brand new bill--will also start the 60 day override clock all over again.

Now a clock starting in the first week of May would set the Diet up for an override in early July...which is something the PM's people and the ruling coalition would probably want to avoid given that would put a loud battle about an incredibly important bill right smack dab in the middle of the Toyako Summit--the most historic, important and environmentally correct summit ever™!

As for what the DPJ's response to today's events will be, it looks like going forward with the threatened censure motion will be a tough call. It is not necessarily significant that the PM can ignore the censure motion--the point all the newspapers harp on. The core issue is that a censure motion could be perceived as a waste of time.

Not showing up for votes--boycotting the Diet--is perfectly acceptable political theater with a long and illustrious history. Not showing up challenges the ruling party to push forward legislation using the rules of the Diet and its majority.

A censure motion, however, will be under the operational control of the opposition. The Democratic Party House of Councillors Diet Measures Chairman will have to go to Speaker Eda Satsuki and the other opposition parties to instigate the assembling of a quorum of the House of Councillors for an act that has 1) no effect as law and 2) no basis in law.

The calendar of the House of Councillors is the DPJ's ball of string--to play with or not depending on the party's reading of the mood of a public pissed off at new taxes and automatic deductions.

The public may not be in the mood for meaningless gestures--expecially ones engaged in by those living off the public purse.

Tricky thing, the public mood, what?

Good Morning, Nagata-chō!

Well now, here we are--the big day, the day when we get to see whether Kōno Tarō will pull a lion's head out of a top hat, or whether he is all bluster and no votes.

(Seriously, if he had not gone to Georgetown, would anybody still be listening to him? Well, O.K., I will admit, the liver section donation thing was very impressive...)

On the other side of the aisle of treason, Sunday Mainichi says 15 Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers in the House of Councillors are poised to jump ship over the party's opposition to road construction and other fiscal goodies. No doubt Ōe Yasuhiro and Watanabe Hiroshi already have both feet out of the party -- I swear one of the newspapers told me that Ōe went so far as to voice support for the LDP candidate in Sunday's Yamaguchi by-election, mirroring Watanabe's support of the non-DPJ candidate in Niigata one election back.

However, I still do not see how they could leave the party when their seats are a regional bloc seats assigned according to a position on a party list.

Can one walk out with a proportional seat? Or leave with it under one's arm after being expelled from the party?

What Ozawa Ichirō Needs...

...is a House of Representatives election as soon as possible.

But not

--because he thinks the Democratic Party of Japan can become the new majority party.

The personal relationships between Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) district representatives, around half of whom are 2nd, 3rd and even 4th generation representatives of their electoral districts, and their many, many clients are probably too high barrier for any challenger to leap over--at least until the next round of redistricting.

--because he wants to be prime minister.

Even if the political opposition prevents the LDP/New Komeitō coalition from winning a majority of seats, forcing the LDP/New Komeitō into negotiations establishing a grand coalition with the DPJ, opening the door for Ozawa to demand the premiership, it is doubtful that Ozawa has the physical stamina to be the nation's leader.

(All of which should not be interpreted to mean Ozawa does not desire either of the above electoral outcomes. Of course he believes that winning outright or keeping the ruling coalition from winning a majority would be just grrrrreat!)

Ozawa wants an immediate election in order for the DPJ to win enough seats to rob the current ruling coalition of its 2/3 majority in the House of Representatives. Winning 1/3 +1 seats, even if it requires continued collaboration with the Socialists and the Communists, would be a worthwhile achievement--because it would terminate the current coalition's ability to override the actions or inactions of House of Councillors. Denying the ruling a coalition of override power would force the ruling coalition to good faith (i.e., DPJ-dominated) negotiations about all legislation and appointments--something the ruling coalition has failed to do so far and--as the nomination of former Finance Ministry Vice Minister Watanabe Hiroshi to be Vice-Governor of the Bank of Japan demonstrates--the ruling coalition continues to fail to do.

A modest and proximate goal, 100% guaranteed to happen. The DPJ would need to take only around 20 seats from the ruling coalition--in an election that would be testing the abnormal Koizumi Jun'ichiro-engineered LDP House of Representatives majority of 2005.

Ocha-no-ko saisai (piece of cake).

So why do so many pundits keep floating a "the DPJ should be careful, not push too hard on getting its own way, because the party could come out looking obstructionist, costing it its chance at victory in the next election" nostrum?

The Revolt of Heisei 20

Party affiliations in the House of Representatives:

LDP = 304

New Komeito = 31

Total numbers of representatives in the ruling coalition = 335

2/3 of the members of the House of Representatives = 320

Number of dissenters needed to kill the gasoline tax upon the revote to held possibly on April 30 (April 29 is a national holiday. Will the Speaker of the House of Representatives be able to summon a quorum during Golden Week?) = 16

-------------------------------------------------------

Kōno Tarō believes he can lead a limited rebellion against the road tribe in support of the Prime Minister's proposals on the road construction bills.

I think events will sweep past even Kōno's group thanks to Elections Measures Chairman Koga Makoto. His thinly veiled contempt for the Koizumi Kids seems ready to birth a monster.

The Koizumi Kids, the freshmen elected in 2005 on the wave of enthusiasm for Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō's promises of continued structural reform, are staring at defeat in the next elections. Many of them represent urban or suburban districts or are holding at-large proportional vote seats normally occupied by members of the Democratic Party. Given the current unpopularity of the government, the Koizumi Kids have only a tiny chance of retaining their seats.

Koga has not come straight out and said, "You are all freaks. I cannot spend a yen on you because you have zero chance at winning the next time around."

Instead, he has been deliberate, trying to make it seem as though he is agonizing over whether not to throw his weight behind the Koizumi Kids candidates. His insistence on selecting "candidates who can win" for the district seats and his favoritism toward the exiles (the LDP members expelled by Koizumi for their opposition to the privatization of the Post Office) has nevertheless made it clear that Koga considers the Koizumi Kids unworthy of cultivation and encouragement.

This is classic marginal return versus growth decisionmaking...a prudent marshalling of electoral resources toward nailing down a low-level target.

Only one problem, though...it is not election time yet. There are bills that still need to be passed using the two-thirds override provision.

For the Koizumi Kids, some of who are hardly children (Yosano Kaoru is one of them) the question to ponder over the next four weeks is:

"When the party is unlikely to support me, why should I support the party?"

Later - Okumura Jun not only does not agree with me, he thinks I am wrong, wrong, wrong.

Where you stand depends...

..on where you sit.

The Sankei Shimbun had a neat shorthand the other day for the two main approaches toward Diet affairs splitting the LDP membership in two. With more than a nod toward the pre-war split of the Imperial Army into the impetuous and violent Imperial Way Faction (Kōdōha - 皇道派）and the cautious, positioning-first Control Faction (Tōseiha - 統制派）, the Sankei, in a front page article, declared the LDP divided into Forceful Breakthrough Faction (Kyōkōtoppaha - 強行突破派) and a Valuing Debate Faction (Taiwajūshiha - 対話重視派).

According to the Sankei's formulation, the Forceful Breakthrough Faction advocates the fearless use of the two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives to override the vetoes or inactions of the Democratic Party-coalition controlled House of Councillors. Led by LDP House of Councillors leader Aoki Mikio and a core of senior LDP House of Councillors members, the Forceful Breakthrough Faction desperately argued for the passage of the two month extension of the temporary gasoline surcharge in order to set up the eventual override of the Democratic Party's opposition to the surcharge's renewal.

The Valuing Debate Faction, which prevailed in the collision over the handling of the gasoline surcharges, is by contrast concerned about the public image of the operations of the House of Representatives. If the Fukuda government just forces through legislation, especially deeply unpopular legislation like the temporary gasoline surcharge, then the issue of the legitimacy of the present regime will be pushed to the forefront as well.

While the written Constitution states the House of Representatives can simply override the House of Councillors at a whim, the unwritten Constitution--the silent compact with the citizenry--is that the government will test itself with an election before proceeding with such forceful action. For the leaders of the LDP who are also members of the House of Representatives--which means just about everybody who is anybody--testing the popularity of the government and the party in a House of Representatives election is the last thing they would want to do.

Unlike the LDP House of Councillors members who get to glower impotently at the Democrats for the next three years and possibly the next six, the House of Representatives members actually have real latent power thanks to their aberrant numbers. The LDP Representatives will do almost anything to put off the day they have to surrender their latent power--including, paradoxically, avoiding the wielding that power for their own immediate, narrow personal self-interests.

In prevailing in the intra-party battle, the Valuing Debate Faction has almost certainly killed off any hope of the renewing of the gasoline surcharge for the purpose of constructing roads. The surcharge will either expire, be redirected to the general fund or be recast as an anti-global warming levy--a lollypop for the press attending the Toyako Summit to suck on.

Whether the Valuing Debate Faction's defeat of the Forceful Breakthrough Faction is the product of a badly managed legislative calendar (as LDP Secretary General Ibuki Bunmei implies in the article) or represents a more fundamental and much-delayed resignation to the House of Councillors' right to object to and even kill off legislation of questionable value remains to be seen.

I hope it is the latter.