I
think that Noda stanched the bleeding with his surprise move to dissolve the
diet on his own terms. Caught off-guard, Abe scrambled, leaving viewers with the
impression of voluble indecisiveness. He has been looking healthier and animated
since his cure, but his tendency to over-explain, exposing himself to greater risk
of damaging errors and out-of-context quotes, such as happened with Norimitsu
Onishi’s “comfort women” article back in the day, remains intact. Abe also has
been tacking towards support for TPP negotiations*, but Noda got there first,
and more securely to boot. Abe will be minding his words on China, which will severely
limit his ability to play the national security card. I still don’t think Noda and
the DPJ has much of a chance retaining power—Koizumi for all practical purposes
used the Post Office rebels to push the DPJ off center stage; deep-sixing the
LDP and the Third Force movements is a very different task. But it’s better
than nothing, which is what he would have wound up with if he’d dithered and backed
into the snap election to ever diminishing public support. Additional
defections certainly hurt though; let’s see how many actually leave.
The
Third Force movement will rise as high as an eventual alliance allows them to. Noda’s
November surprise actually helps bring the parties together. Since they have little
time to continue preparations for running fully national campaigns, they may
have no choice but to split up turf and support each other’s single-member
district candidates in their respective strongholds. They could actually wind
up better off that way. Of course all the maneuvering not to mention the outsized
egos involved may wind up making the movements even more unwieldy and divisive than
the post-1998 merger DPJ. Ozawa is the odd man out. He’ll try to leverage
whatever he has left to navigate his way around the post-election landscape, but
I agree with the conventional wisdom that he is a spent force.
In
any case, barring a massive post-election realignment, it remains highly likely
that 1) either the DPJ-PNP or LDP-Komeito will have a plurality but not a
majority in the House of Councilors (HOC); while 2) the Third Force movements
will work with an uncompromising eye towards the 2013 HOC election, when half
the seats** will be up for grabs, and beyond. In the meantime, the most likely
outcome is that the coalition winding up with the fewer seats in the House of
Representatives will throw its votes to the other in the second-round run-off for
the prime minister’s office. After that, the two sides will be on their best
behavior through the upcoming 2012 regular Diet session for tax and social
security reform and Diet downsizing, as well as other legislation and approvals
for BOJ, FTC and other appointments, while remaining on alert for any errors
and weaknesses on the other side to capitalize on. They both need to show that
they are constructive and have the nation’s best interests at heart, and their
policy positions on major issues are not that far apart. Even nuclear power is
not a matter of pure pro- and con-. Besides, the Third Movement forces are unlikely
to be willing coalition partners and more trouble than they’re worth if they
are. They will see no value in compromising their policy positions to accommodate
a minority government.
Speaking
of Third Force movements, Hashimoto and your Party always favored TPP
negotiations—it helps when you share the same METI and MOF alumni as advisors—and
Ishihara has dropped his opposition, most surely in order to join hands with
Hashimoto. There’s Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura, but he’s less equal than the
others, and should come around anyway if that’s the cost of hitching his wagon
to a Hashimoto-Ishihara alliance.
* see, for
instance, Yomiuri.
** The HOC is all
but sure to be downsized as part of the reform process through the 2013 and
2016 elections.
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