Ichiro Ozawa avoids 'taking responsibility'
In the immediate aftermath of the Japanese general election, political attention has been distracted by political in-fighting within the main opposition party. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports that the discord is all the more inexplicable because, contrary to many analyses, Shinshinto did not do that badly at the polls.
HONGKONG (JP): As Japanese politicians get down to the serious post-election wheeling and dealing, there has already been some high drama in the smoke-filled back rooms.
This initial drama was not directly part of the maneuvering as the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) seeks to bring together a new ruling coalition. Instead, it concerned whether or not the main opposition party, Shinshinto (New Frontier Party), would stay together or split.
Such a split, were it to take place, would be nothing short of a tragedy for Japan, because it would set back -- and probably reverse -- the modest but real progress so far made towards developing a viable two-party system.
Shinshinto's fate in the recently completed election is the immediate cause of the party rumpus, and it carries a strong message of discouragement for U.S. Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole.
Dole has based his campaign on a massive tax cut -- and so did Shinshinto. In fact, it went further and also promised not to increase the unpopular consumption tax from 3 percent to 5 percent next April. The LDP, and all other parties, supported the need for the tax hike, according to the Ministry of Finance's plan.
Had Shinshinto contented itself with holding back any increase in the consumption tax, it might have done better. It could have pointed out that all the other parties were meekly following the dictates of the bureaucracy.
But the electorate was skeptical of Shinshinto's huge tax cut promises, as is the US electorate of Dole's.
The Shinshinto leader Ichiro Ozawa traveled 14,000 kilometers in the hectic 12-day campaign, taking the party's reform message directly to the electorate, with the tax promises as the center- piece. But the results were meager: Shinshinto lost four seats, being reduced from 160 to 156 seats in the new House of Representatives.
This has been widely represented as a severe defeat for Ozawa and Shinshinto. In the sense that the party was hoping to oust the LDP as the largest in parliament, it was. Since Shinshinto, of all the Japanese parties, most clearly committed itself to policies of reform, it was a setback for the reformist cause too.
But amidst the disappointment, there were also grounds for satisfaction.
Shinshinto, for example, swept home in the second largest city Osaka and neighboring Kobe, winning 14 out of 18 seats. The fact that this area experienced the incompetence of the ruling LDP-led government firsthand during the major Kobe earthquake last year could explain this landslide.
In the proportional representation (PR) voting, Shinshinto ran the LDP quite close, securing 28.04 percent of the vote, compared to the LDP's 32.76 percent. But the non-communist opposition vote in the single-seat constituencies was split between Shinshinto and the newly formed Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan). Shinshinto won 28 percent of the vote and Minshuto secured 10 percent. Together, their vote (38.6 percent) exactly matches that of the LDP.
The upshot of the opposition's vote being split between two parties was that, in the constituency voting, the LDP won 56.3 percent of the seats with only 38.6 percent of the total vote.
But if the Shinshinto and Minshuto votes in the PR sector are added together, the divided opposition won 44.14 percent of the vote, compared to the LDP's 32.76 percent. When the electorate was called upon to vote for their preferred party under the PR system, nearly 6 percent switched their vote away from the LDP.
Theoretically, according to the canons of good politics, these figures should have resulted in Shinshinto and Minshuto talking together in the post-election maneuvering. Instead, the priority issue has been whether the factions within Shinshinto would stay together in one party.
Two main reasons have been advanced for Shinshinto doing less well at the polls than they had hoped.
One is Ozawa's allegedly autocratic leadership style, which could be translated to mean that Japanese politicians and the press react adversely to a leader with strong ideas and the will to push them through. Those who hanker after "consensus", in other words, may resist someone like Ozawa, who has a clear concept of what the consensus should be.
The second reason is the Shinshinto image of constant internal bickering. The party is itself primarily a coalition of Ozawa's Japan Renewal Party, the Clean Government Party, the Democratic Socialist Party and former prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa's Japan New Party. Clearly, these and other smaller groups have not coalesced as well as they might have done.
Several top-level Shinshinto meetings this week have seen further factional discord. During the campaign, Ozawa stressed that he would "take responsibility" if Shinshinto failed to implement its promised policies. He even suggested he would step down if he failed to win a majority.
In the aftermath of the election, he has appeared reluctant to "take responsibility" for the fact that under his leadership, the party has not acquired a chance to put its ideas into action.
Had Ozawa called the 156 newly elected MPs together and offered to step down, party friction might have been reduced. They probably would have asked him to stay. But Ozawa has proved incapable of such a gesture.
Instead, in reaction to Ozawa's lack of humility, Hosokawa and former prime minister Tsutomu Hata have evidently been talking about breaking away and forming their own party if Ozawa will not step down.
All this must have been music to the ears of caretaker Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, as he seeks to secure at least 30 more MPs to back his government. Winning over defectors from Shinshinto remains one of his options in any future process of coalition-building.
However, for the moment at least, Shinshinto's leaders appear to have recognized the obvious: Their degree of success so far in establishing Shinshinto as the largest opposition party means that they have an interest in staying together, not in breaking apart.
Ozawa, Hosokawa, Hata and former prime minister Toshiki Kaifu have all separately pledged to stay together. But whether they will actually work together in a meaningful way remains in doubt.
Table
Table A: Japanese Election, Oct. 20, 1996
House of Representatives ===================================================== Party Voting in Single-seat Constituencies =====================================================
% of votes % of seats Seats
cast won won** ===================================================== Liberal Democratic 38.6 56.3 169 (239)
Party (LDP) Shinshinto (New 28.0 32.0 96 (156)
Frontier Party) Minshuto (Democratic 10.6 5.7 17 (52)
Party of Japan DPJ) Japan Communist Party 12.6 0.7 2 (26)
(JCP) Social Democratic 2.2 1.3 4 (15)
Party of Japan (SDPJ) Sakigake (New 1.3 0.7 2 (2)
Pioneer Party) Other Parties 2.4 0.3 1 (1) Independent 4.4 3.0 9 (9) ===================================================== Total 100.00 100.00 300 (500)
** Overall total of seats in brackets
Table B: Japanese Election Oct. 20, 1996.
House of Representatives ============================================= Party Voting in Proportinal
Representation*** =============================================
% of votes seats
cast won ============================================= Liberal Democratic 32.76 70
Party (LDP) Shinshinto (New 28.04 60
Frontier Party) Minshuto (Democratic 16.10 35
Party of Japan DPJ) Japan Communist Party 13.08 24
(JCP) Social Democratic 6.38 11
Party of Japan (SDPJ) Sakigake (New 1.05 0 Pioneer Party) Other Parties 2.58 0 ============================================= Total 100 200
*** These are the nationwide totals, but the seats were actually allotted on the basis of the vote in 11 districts. Thus the nationwide percentage of votes and the number of seats do not necessarily match.