Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Sankei Says Hatoyama Ahead; I Say Deuces Wild

According to the headline of this Sankei report, it’s Mr. Hatoyama in the Lead, Meets Mr. Kan and Asks for Support.

Maybe, maybe not.

Now, as I’ve related here, if Hatoyama adds most if not all of Ozawa’s 50 votes to his own 30, he has 80 or so out o f the 221 Diet members eligible to vote for party president. That is surely very doable. Then, if he can add the bulk of the 20 ex-Socialists—more favorably disposed to old-school LDP alumnus Ozawa than Okada and his new school allies—to this total, all he needs to do is corral a goodly portion of Kan’s 30 votes to put himself over the top.

Not so fast. The same Sankei notes that the three DPJ Diet members from Okayama Prefecture have decided to poll 3,000 local DPJ members to determine whom to vote for. Other media reports claim that other prefectural chapters are trying to follow suit.

Now, if you’ve been wondering, where have I heard this story before, you are not alone. For it was the local voting in the 2001 LDP Presidential primaries that compelled its Diet members to ditch overwhelming favorite and former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and throw their support behind once-fringe candidate Junichiro Koizumi. More recently in 2007, Taro Aso put the scare into Yasuo Fukuda in the local voting and paved the way for his succession the following year.

Ozawa has done his browbeating best to cut out the local yokels and to force the election on a Saturday, just four days after his resignation—precisely to forestall an uprising from the provinces. He knows that Okada has been spending almost every week of the last four years “trampling on the sewer coverings” and wading the rice paddies, talking (and listening) to Taro Q. Citizen, well before he began his own chiho jungyo. But that only diminishes Hatoyama in the media’s collective mind. The media has already been casting the two-horse race as a battle between Hatoyama the Ozawa Sockpuppet vs. Okada the Klutz. So guess who is going to win a media poll?

Okada has two days to put the scare into the local chapters. The race is wide open.

12 comments:

Aceface said...

Sankei is increasingly operates under the motto of "All the news that we decided to fit,we print".

First Shokun! then Weekly Shincho scandal and now Sankei.Looks like the right media chose to jump off the cliff even though no one is pushing their back.

Jun Okumura said...

Aceface: The online Sankei only looks like that because it publishes, if I’m not mistaken, material not only from its mainstream daily but also stuff that goes into its tabloids, as well as leftovers. A such, it is bound to have a racier look than its more restrained competitors, who, again unlike Sankei, are also reluctant to go all in with their online versions.

The other two publications you point to each have different origins, suffer from different problems, and are meeting different fates.

Get A Job, Son! said...

Didn't Hatoyama say he would resign if Ozawa goes? Did I read this on this blog?

Jun Okumura said...

HAHA, yes he did. GAJS. He actually mentioned it without prompting in today’s press conference announcing his candidacy, but none of the reporters pressured him about it. I guess the press is just happy there is a race. Hatoyama is a decent human being with a long record as a political reformist, so maybe they’re willing to write off his time served as Ozawa attack dog as an aberration.

In any case, it hasn’t become an issue.

Get A Job, Son! said...

Thanks for the confirmation... I was thinking that I must be mad for having read that comment months back, but NO ONE seems to care about it now.
I guess politicians are famous for breaking promises, so this is a non-issue (?).
... and the voting public know already what they are choosing.


PS... I have followed your blog for some months now, but always deferred from posting as I will admit to not being 'nuanced' in the finer points of Japan politics.
Love your blog... even the small detail like your changing text in the title banner.
Keep up the good work.

Jun Okumura said...

Why thank you, GAJS, for your kind words, most importantly for noticing the (irregular) changes in the title banner. A journalist who reads my blog copied it a few years back, but otherwise I know of no one else who does that. I’m having fun as it is, but it’s nice to know that someone is aware of it.

And if my memory serves me correctly, it was weeks, or days—not months—ago that I mentioned it. Political time is very fast, and full of discontinuities. Incidentally, that’s why it’s so hard to foresee political events. Sh!t happens.

Aceface said...

"The online Sankei only looks like that because it publishes, if I’m not mistaken, material not only from its mainstream daily but also stuff that goes into its tabloids, as well as leftovers."

Well.I've been reading(but not subscribing)Sankei in paper format for the past 15 years.
And I regret to inform you that they chose to be the LDP mouthpiece on this issue both on and off-line.

Jun Okumura said...

Aceface: I should have made it clearer that I was referring to the entire online Sankei, not just its political content.

Speaking to your point, though, Sankei hews to what I’ve taken to calling the conservative-nationalist line. It’s the Japanese near-equivalent—keeping in mind the historical, cultural, social and economic differences—to what I’ll call here Fox News conservatives. It is selective in its support of LDP politicians and LDP policies, and will not hesitate to favor ideologically compatible non-LDP politicians such as Takeo Hiranuma. Thought experiment: How would Sanei react to the foreign policy of Prime Minister Yamazaki?

Actually, the Yomiuri is more closely associated with the generic LDP and LDP politicians. But here again, the support is less partisan than the manifestation of a post-WW II mixture of establishmentarian and populist sentiments.

Aceface said...

"Thought experiment: How would Sanei react to the foreign policy of Prime Minister Yamazaki?"


See,that's the point.Why aren't Sankei reporters taking on that Panda-hugging Nikai for taking money from Nishimatsu and not resigning?They were pretty harsh on him few years ago which indicates me that the recent bias is odd even for Sankei.....

Jun Okumura said...

Aceface, I bet Sankei would go after a Nikai administration’s foreign policy with equal fervor. But I doubt that the editors and management get together and decide to tell the reporters to lay off on Nikai because it’ll hurt the LDP. But my conjectures aside, have you seen anything recently about Nikai and his Nishimatsu issues in Mainichi? Asahi? (Or Yomiuri?) Are they all in the tank for the LDP? Does Nikai have pictures? And look, helping get rid of Ozawa—again in consort with Mainichi and Asahi (and Yomiuri)—is the greatest gift imaginable for the DPJ.

Actually, I’ve addressed this point (not the pictures) in an answer to a comment elsewhere (I think), but I have to confess that the mystery remains. When the DPJ takes over—I think it’s when, not if, regardless of who wins the Saturday DPJ vote—it is likely to hold the Prosecutors Office accountable, not in the sense of why didn’t you guys go get him—any such pressure will hurt the DPJ more than anyone else—but by way of a public accounting of the legal grounds for his eventual treatment.

Aceface said...

”But I doubt that the editors and management get together and decide to tell the reporters to lay off on Nikai because it’ll hurt the LDP.”

I bet Sankei would.

"helping get rid of Ozawa—again in consort with Mainichi and Asahi (and Yomiuri)—is the greatest gift imaginable for the DPJ."

I disagree.We still don't know whether DPJ can topple LDP and even if DPJ takes over,it's administration wouldn't last that long.

What LDP had feared was Ozawa could break up LDP after DPJ takes over.
The nightmare scenario was that after DPJ takes over and Ozawa reorganize the coalition by handpicking LDP politicians in return of the power sharing and tear down BOTH DPJ and LDP and bydoing so,reconstruct the political landscape of Nagatacho the way he wanted.

Jun Okumura said...

Aceface:

I bet Sankei would.The ownership might, but it’s just not feasible. Print reporters are harder to keep in line than TV journalists. (Case in point: WJS v. Greta Van Sustern). We’ll have to agree to disagree here, but Nikai does not help your argument, since the other mainstream dailies have also for the most part forgotten about Nikai.

As for the post-election scenario, we’ll see. Let’s keep in mind that political parties don’t think or emote, it’s the individual politicians that do. That’s important to keep in mind when you talk about non-institutional decisions, such as: Should I/we leave the LDP?