A Wish List, Opened

How?

That is the inescapable question.

After the hoopla and security overkill of the Toyako Summit dies down, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet will be left with seven weeks of housekeeping duties and summer reading time before the start of the extraordinary session. The political classes will disperse to their home districts for seven weeks of vital constituent hand-holding and, when appropriate, backslapping—-an ominously long time for politicians to be immersed in a bath of personal and local complaints. In the absence of an election, the nation will largely put politics aside, focusing its attention on what is truly important: the Koshien high school baseball tournament--which probably will not, for demographic and wealth reasons, be won by a team from the Hokuriku, Chugoku, Shikoku or Tohoku regions.

But once this idyllic summer—possibly the last summer of the LDP's era of dominance—comes to an end, the Prime Minister, his Cabinet, his party and the ruling coalition will find themselves facing a daunting question.

How?

How will it be possible, in just a few months before the New Year, to draft and pass legislation

- reforming the payment system of the wildly unpopular eldercare system
- fulfilling the first phase of decentralization
- laying the groundwork for a fundamental rebalancing of the tax system
- renewing the Indian Ocean Maritime Self Defense Forces dispatch
- shifting the gasoline tax revenues from road construction to the general fund

over the determined opposition and delaying tactics of large segments of the Liberal Democratic Party, not to mention the knee-jerk opposition and delaying tactics of the majority in the House of Councillors?

And what about the big items on the agenda, the looming multifaceted issues requiring a flurry of action after years of benign neglect, such as:

- providing for the physical and financial needs of burgeoning population of the very old, at a reasonable cost
- righting the crippled, parasitic economies of the rural areas
- providing the legal and ideological framework for an influx of immigrant labor, both skilled and unskilled, temporary and permanent
-reversing the growing number of suicides
- fulfilling promises made at international events like TICAD and Toyako
- increasing the birth rate
- reversing the runaway destruction of the environment, both global and local
- preparing for a post-hydrocarbon-burning world
- providing for Japan's security as the world's power relationships undergo a phase of rapid realignment (and keeping the Americans happy with the Japan-U.S. security alliance through a more gradual and less episodic evolution)

all while the two largest parties in the Diet do not speak to each other...the bureaucracy is demoralized and despised...and the press and intellectuals are perceived to be shabby, corruptible and narcissistic?

How is it possible to change everything that must be changed--when everything that must be changed is .....everything?

Accommodation with wolves

Tobias Harris, back in Japan for a spell, writes about the agreement between the leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeitō on revisions to the bill reforming the Basic Law on the Bureaucratic System (kōmuin seido kihonhō kaikakuan). The leadership of the ruling coalition, if not the rank and file of the ruling parties, has accepted many of the necessary revisions to the bill demanded by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. The revised bill now goes to the House of Representatives.

A few points that need emphasis:

1) In agreeing to accept modifications to the bill suggested by the DPJ, the reformist wing of the LDP has compromised and made common cause with...the reformist wing of the LDP.

DPJ leader Ozawa Ichirō, his second-in-command Hatoyama Yukio and a much of those in the upper crust of the DPJ are LDP refugees. They differ from many of the reformists in the LDP only in having never jumped back into the LDP, having jumped out once.

Ideologically, centrist DPJ members are the blood brothers and sisters of the anti-patronage wing of the LDP. In a certain sense, Koizumi Jun'ichirō was the first DPJ prime minister: in terms of reforms he borrowed a lot of DPJ ideas and stances and in terms of the LDP...well, from the outset he promised to destroy it (albeit in an effort to save it) --all to the DPJ's black fury. That the reform-minded Fukuda & Friends segments of the LDP, the New Komeitō leadership and the DPJ to come together on trimming the wings of the ministries and the zokugiin should come as no surprise. What is surprising is that it took six months and a near death experience for the Fukuda Cabinet to understand who, in terms of domestic policy, its friends are.

Left fuming at this surrender deal are the recalcitrant, patronage-reliant elements of the LDP. They will have their vengeance someday but on the wording of this bill at least, the Prime Minister seems to have overidden (word choice intentional) his internal party opposition.

However (shikashi)

2) Having cut the legs out from under the LDP members that are both clients and patrons of various ministries and industrial sectors, Prime Minister Fukuda has to push this reform bill through both houses of the Diet--and soon.

Given how the zokugiin hate (a) reform in both the abstract and the concrete and (b) the DPJ-authored changes toughening up this particular reform bill, the chance that the government will be capable of cobbling together a two thirds majority for an Article 59 override, should the House of Councillors reject the government's bill, is close to nil.

Seen in the light of Prime Minister Fukuda's inability to push the bill through using a House of Representatives override, the enormity of PM's wager becomes apparent. He is placing his reputation as a leader and reformer on the line against one of the surest things in Japanese politics: Ozawa Ichirō's wish to topple an LDP-dominated government. As the video montage of the Monday night political hackfest Terebi Tackle (on the TV ASAHI network) reminded viewers, Ozawa has been merciless in both the building up and the demolition of political ententes--his ultimate, yet strangely forgotten act of destruction having been the late March 2000 abandonment of the tripartite LDP-New Komeito-Liberal Party coalition that likely triggered, on April 1, Prime Minister Obuchi Keizō's fatal stroke.

Despite this rather nasty shadow looming over his past, Ozawa must feel sorely tempted to instruct his House of Councillors members to reject the government's revised bill.

Should the bill fail to pass both Houses of the Diet, after the PM and the LDP leadership went the extra kilometer to accommodate the DPJ's demands-- and in so doing betrayed the LDP's zokugiin -- well, if that does not trigger immediate demands for Fukuda's resignation as party leader, I do not know what will. A Fukuda resignation over the session's fundamental reform bill could even blow the LDP apart.

With the DPJ riding high in many public opinon polls, Ozawa must feel tempted to ignore Fukuda's attempt to forge a trans-party reform consensus on reforming the bureaucracy. There may not be a better chance to attack a weak and exposed Fukuda, leaving hism naked and defenseless against the rage felt of his party's anti-reform and revisionist wings.

Were I to lay a bet on the outcome of this encounter, I would not want to be placing too much money on the PM's longterm survival.

It would be all too easy to just tip the balance...

Opposition Has Its Privileges

Ozawa Ichirō is trying to put together a winning coalition by promising the earth and the sky to various blocs of citizens.

The LDP and the New Komeitō are using the levers of government and the public purse to retain the loyalty of their clients, who are in large part parasites on the system.

These are not equivalent activities--even if, in theory, both pose a threat to the taxpayer's bank account.