POLITICS-JAPAN: Image Makeover Works for Koizumi

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Edwin Karmiol

TOKYO, Sep 12 2005 (IPS) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s election strategy of projecting his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as revamped and run by young, forward-looking men and women seems to have paid off, as it secured an absolute majority of 296 seats in the 480- member lower house of parliament.

The victory in Sunday’s general elections would allow Koizumi to pursue planned reforms, and comfortably too, if he decides to enroll his coalition partner, the New Komeito party, and work with a thumping 327 seats that could steamroller any opposition in the upper house. ”I am happy that Prime Minister Koizumi is back. The LDP is the biggest party in Japan and nobody can change it,” said Ayano Ishihara, secretary in a major shipping company. ”The only thing I am unhappy about is the presence of Japanese troops in Iraq,” she added, reflecting the popular mood.

Taking a gamble, Koizumi dissolved the Lower House on Aug. 8 and called for a snap general election after his pet project to privatise the postal system (Japan Post) by 2007, was voted down in the upper house.

In a fit of anger, the prime minister also expelled 37 lawmakers of his party, who opposed the postal reform bills, and refused to endorse their candidature. Instead, he selected a team from among loyalists, dubbed ‘assassins’ by the media, who approved of his policies.

The first task of the assassins was to challenge the ‘traitors’ at the hustings and they seem to have done admirably well.

Koizumi’s trump card was to woo the female vote using ten handpicked women candidates, starting with the iconic Satsuki Katayama, a former Miss Tokyo University, who became the first woman budget examiner at the Finance Ministry.

Another winning, high-profile woman LDP candidate was Yuriko Koike, who left a high-profile job as television anchor job to become environment minister.

But Koizumi’s team also included Takefumi Horie, a 32-year-old university dropout and Internet millionaire, who in spite of huge popularity ratings, lost to ‘rebel’ Shizuka Kamei.

Such reverses did not seriously dent the image of LDP, cultivated assiduously by the media-savvy Koizumi, as a party that is reinventing itself by consciously replacing troublesome dissenters with younger people, and also, more women.

Armed with a new mandate, Koizumi is likely to concentrate on revamping Japan Post – which not only provides one of the best postal services in the world but is also the world’s largest financial institution, with savings and other deposits, worth more than a colossal three trillion US dollars.

Of Japan’s 24,700 post offices, 19,000 are identified as ”special post offices” that are privately owned and managed. When the postal service was established in 1871 on the archipelago, its operations were mostly handed over to the elders of towns and villages and it soon became a family affair.

Even today, these entities are handed down from father to son. The space rental of all post offices and the generous salaries of the 271,000- strong work force are paid by the government and employees rank as civil servants, though not all have passed appropriate tests.

Concerned Japanese fear that the privatisation of Japan Post could lead to the suppression of post offices in their small localities and cause great inconvenience. But Koizumi’s insistence on privatising Japan Post is aimed at getting hold of its assets and placing them in more rewarding investments that would stimulate overall economic growth.

His next objective is to fight corruption. This involves denying some LDP members access to funds, which are being wasted on useless road and bridge construction, that only serves to advance their own political careers.

Despite its vast deposits, Japan Post does not extend loans to the general public and private businesses. The money (mostly people’s savings) is often allocated to white elephant projects, initiated by politicians wishing to improve their image in their respective constituencies.

An estimated 370 billion US dollars has been lost on projects like building new expressway extensions in low-demand regions.

Yasuo Tanaka, head of the New Party Nippon, said he was not against privatisation, but Koizumi never explained how exactly it would help resolve the public debt which stands now at 7.1 trillion dollars. ”We’re not against postal privatistion,” he was quoted as saying in the Japan Times newspaper.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which fielded several LDP rebels, saw its seats decline to 113, from the 177 before the election, and its leader Katsuya Okada has taken responsibility for the crushing defeat and stepped down.

The coming months are bound to be hectic for Koizumi. Besides the privatisation issue, the prime minister will also have to attend to pressing diplomatic tasks, starting with hostility from China over what are seen as attempts to whitewash Japan’s wartime record.

Some Japanese citizens too are worried about Koizumi’s controversial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of ‘Class-A’ war criminals repose, and which may have exacerbated worsening relations with China, and also South Korea.

Many believe that ties with these powerful neighbouring countries could have improved under a DPJ dispensation.

The U.S. is particularly elated at the victory of Koizumi and although, he will still have to make more efforts to settle bilateral issues, namely relocating the U.S. Marines at other sites in Japan.

Unlike the promise of the DPJ to withdraw the Japan Ground Self Defence Forces (JGSDF) from Samawah, Iraq, Koizumi will not. Worried Japanese fear that Koizumi has been following a dangerous path by maintaining troops in Iraq and, generally, leaning over backwards to accommodate Washington’s polices.

The close relationship with the U.S., critics have pointed out, has not been reciprocated by enough support for Japan’s candidature for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council.

On the domestic front, other than the postal reforms, the public anticipates better answers to pressing pension and welfare solutions to Japan’s ageing populations. Said homemaker S. Noriko: ”Once the euphoria of the election results has died down, we expect that Koizumi will come up with some reasonable pension and welfare solutions”.

Another cloud on the horizon is the planned revision of Japan’s Constitution. It involves the renunciation of Article 9, that would enable this country to increase its arms buildup and send troops to war- afflicted countries.

Among the first to congratulate Koizumi, on Monday, was Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who called from New York where he is due to attend the U.N. General Assembly. Koizumi is also expected to attend the summit.

Howard is, in many ways, in a similar situation as Koizumi. He has stood up against loud protests over maintaining troops in Iraq and also for aggressive privatisation, starting with selling off the government’s majority stakes in Telstra, Australia’s biggest telecommunications company.