The LDP’s refueling extension bill is now in the Upper House, but the DPJ bill to help out on the ground in Afghanistan did not make it out of the Lower House. The LDP-New Komeito voted the latter down, no surprise there. However, the Communists (JCP) and Social Democrats (SDP) added their voices of opposition just to be sure.
Not that either of the two hands cared what the other one was doing; the JCP and SDP don’t want the Self-Defense Forces to go to Afghanistan, period. In fact, there’s no reason to believe that the two left-wing parties and any independent allies of theirs will vote for any particular measure put forth by a DPJ-led administration. Beyond that, there’s the People’s New Party, more conservative, actually, than the LDP itself.
Unless the DPJ winds up with a majority of the seats in the upcoming election, a DPJ administration may have to work even more closely with the LDP and/or the New Komeito—a grand coalition?—than it’s doing now if it wants to get its legislative initiatives out of the Lower House. And we haven’t even talked about the Upper House, where the DPJ will be short of a majority at least until 2010. The alternative for the DPJ is to find an LDP splinter group that is willing to join a coalition government. Both of these options, if engineered successfully, should be more manageable and able to get more things done than a coalition with the other parties currently in opposition.
I’ve already said that the DPJ is a poor man’s LDP. In fact, the two have far more in common (including their respective ideological cacophonies barely contained by party discipline and a common desire for power) than any other combination of the political parties. The Japanese electorate thinks so too, if this Waseda-Yomiuri poll is any indication. The DPJ and LDP both scored highly negative 17%-79% and 20%-80% satisfaction/dissatisfaction splits respectively. As for future prospects, the DPJ and DPJ scored nearly identical 49%-50% and 50%-48% respectively for the expectation/non-expectation split.
A few caveats: this is a Yomiuri poll, albeit with the Waseda University gloss. Also, the DPJ did do better on other indices. It also scored better with the younger generations. Conventional wisdom tells us that, other things being equal, that is not good news for the DPJ in terms of election-day turnout. However, it does bode somewhat well for the DPJ in the long-run if (a huge if at that) the political configurations remain more or less as is.
Showing posts with label Grand Coalition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grand Coalition. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Friday, December 21, 2007
They Will Bribe Us with Our Money: A Brief Case for a Grand Coalition
I noted very briefly here, near the end, that there was a case to be made for a grand coalition. In my reply to a comment from t, I wrote the following:
“The downside of a piecemeal approach to collaboration across the aisle is that the two sides can easily wind up competing to bribe us with our money*. Case in point: Most recently, the LDP has reportedly shifted its position on agriculture subsidies to accomodate small-lot and over-65farmers, both of which categories are currently ineligible. A grand coalition makes it easier to share all the credit and the blame within a broad range of measures in a comprehensive policy package. At least that's my idea.
*I should trademark this.”
I gave a little thought to expanding this, taking in such incidents as the waffling on both sides on the gasoline tax. I may well do so one of these days, but I’m bringing the essence to your attention, in case you might want to do it yourself.
BTW, if anyone has information on subprime loans and their securitization that is good enough to do some hard thinking with, please put it here as a comment. Thanks.
“The downside of a piecemeal approach to collaboration across the aisle is that the two sides can easily wind up competing to bribe us with our money*. Case in point: Most recently, the LDP has reportedly shifted its position on agriculture subsidies to accomodate small-lot and over-65farmers, both of which categories are currently ineligible. A grand coalition makes it easier to share all the credit and the blame within a broad range of measures in a comprehensive policy package. At least that's my idea.
*I should trademark this.”
I gave a little thought to expanding this, taking in such incidents as the waffling on both sides on the gasoline tax. I may well do so one of these days, but I’m bringing the essence to your attention, in case you might want to do it yourself.
BTW, if anyone has information on subprime loans and their securitization that is good enough to do some hard thinking with, please put it here as a comment. Thanks.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Ruling Coalition and Opposition Work Together, Earn Passing Grade
The hard-copy Yomiuri gives regular updates on legislative activities. As of last week, 11 legislative bills that the Yomiuri considers important had been adopted, with eight more likely to make it by the 15 December deadline. Of the former, eight had been submitted by the Cabinet, of which five were passed unanimously, while three were adopted after the ruling coalition and the opposition parties agreed on a joint amendment. Of the three adopted bills submitted by Diet members, two were jointly submitted by the coalition and the opposition parties while the other was a joint proposal that unified bills submitted from both sides. Of the eight bills likely to be adopted, one, an amendment to the Broadcasting Act submitted by the Cabinet is likely to be adopted since the coalition agreed to alter a controversial article that would have enhanced the power of authorities to take action against a broadcasting station that aired false information. Of the other seven likely to be adopted, one will be jointly submitted by the coalition and the opposition parties while the other six are joint proposals unifying a couple of bills submitted from the two sides.
The Yomiuri report lists 10 other legislative bills (five Cabinet submissions, five Diet member submissions) still under consideration for which there is no likelihood of being adopted by 15 December. The refueling resumption bill is one of them. Since four other minor legislative bills* have also been adopted, the post-15 December supermajority override will bring the total of legislative bills adopted at this Diet session to at least 25.
It has become customary for the Diet to hold lengthy extraordinary/special Diet sessions after the summer hiatus following the regular Diet session. In fact, with another, more brief “Golden Week” interruption to the regular session, the legislative schedule looks increasingly like a two-semester school year with a brief spring break. So let’s see how the “twisted” Diet compares with its previous incarnations and issue grades.
In 2005, in the 42-day special Diet session (11 September-1 November) following Prime Minister Koizumi’s landslide victory in the Lower House general election, the Diet passed 28 legislative bills. Of this legislative total, seven were submitted by Diet members, of which five were submitted by committee chairmen. The last figure is significant, because a chairman submission appears to signify that there was at least some positive opposition input*. In 2006, an 84-day extraordinary Diet session (26 September-19 December) saw 25 legislative bills (as well as one treaty) adopted, of which 18 were Cabinet submissions and seven were Diet members submissions (including four committee chairmen submissions).
So the score is 2005 (Koizumi administration) 28, 2006 (Abe administration) 25, and 2007 (Fukuda administration) 25 minimum. Now the 2005 special Diet session did it in 42 days, and the 2007(-2008) extraordinary session is going to take 122 days (with the extension to 15 January), unless the DPJ decides that enough is enough and agrees to cut a deal. Moreover, there’s more to evaluating results than the number of legislative bills passed**. Still, making allowances for the time wasted by the Abe-Fukuda handoff and the Grand Coalition difficulties and the need to adjust to life under a “twisted” Diet, the current session appears to stack up quite nicely with comparative sessions from balmier days.
The real test will come in the regular session that convenes in the bottom half of January, particularly as the March 31 expiration date for so much time-limited legislation － most importantly special tax measures*** － approaches. But if the experience of this Diet session means anything, it is that, despite the contentiousness borne of the uncertainties of a divided house, including all the fuss about a censure motion and/or snap election, the ruling coalition and the opposition have worked to keep the legislative mill rolling. And the need to look reasonable and responsible in the public eye by convincing the media to see matters in that light is likely to keep it that way.
I do believe that the “twisted” Diet will make it more difficult to deal with the more serious questions concerning the long-term health of the nation, which I’ve briefly mentioned elsewhere. That, in fact, is why there is a good case to be made for a grand coalition. (No, not that Grand Coalition.) Still, the ruling coalition and the opposition do deserve passing grades for this lesser of the two semesters.
* I’d be happy to check this if someone paid me for doing it. Otherwise, you’ll have to do it yourself, or accept my educated guess.
** By law, salaries of public servants in four categories require annual adjustments by separate legislation. Housekeeping matters of the Diet sometimes require legislative action, further inflating the number of bills passed in any given session.
*** The loss of gasoline surtaxes alone could reduce the public take by a trillion yen more or less.
The Yomiuri report lists 10 other legislative bills (five Cabinet submissions, five Diet member submissions) still under consideration for which there is no likelihood of being adopted by 15 December. The refueling resumption bill is one of them. Since four other minor legislative bills* have also been adopted, the post-15 December supermajority override will bring the total of legislative bills adopted at this Diet session to at least 25.
It has become customary for the Diet to hold lengthy extraordinary/special Diet sessions after the summer hiatus following the regular Diet session. In fact, with another, more brief “Golden Week” interruption to the regular session, the legislative schedule looks increasingly like a two-semester school year with a brief spring break. So let’s see how the “twisted” Diet compares with its previous incarnations and issue grades.
In 2005, in the 42-day special Diet session (11 September-1 November) following Prime Minister Koizumi’s landslide victory in the Lower House general election, the Diet passed 28 legislative bills. Of this legislative total, seven were submitted by Diet members, of which five were submitted by committee chairmen. The last figure is significant, because a chairman submission appears to signify that there was at least some positive opposition input*. In 2006, an 84-day extraordinary Diet session (26 September-19 December) saw 25 legislative bills (as well as one treaty) adopted, of which 18 were Cabinet submissions and seven were Diet members submissions (including four committee chairmen submissions).
So the score is 2005 (Koizumi administration) 28, 2006 (Abe administration) 25, and 2007 (Fukuda administration) 25 minimum. Now the 2005 special Diet session did it in 42 days, and the 2007(-2008) extraordinary session is going to take 122 days (with the extension to 15 January), unless the DPJ decides that enough is enough and agrees to cut a deal. Moreover, there’s more to evaluating results than the number of legislative bills passed**. Still, making allowances for the time wasted by the Abe-Fukuda handoff and the Grand Coalition difficulties and the need to adjust to life under a “twisted” Diet, the current session appears to stack up quite nicely with comparative sessions from balmier days.
The real test will come in the regular session that convenes in the bottom half of January, particularly as the March 31 expiration date for so much time-limited legislation － most importantly special tax measures*** － approaches. But if the experience of this Diet session means anything, it is that, despite the contentiousness borne of the uncertainties of a divided house, including all the fuss about a censure motion and/or snap election, the ruling coalition and the opposition have worked to keep the legislative mill rolling. And the need to look reasonable and responsible in the public eye by convincing the media to see matters in that light is likely to keep it that way.
I do believe that the “twisted” Diet will make it more difficult to deal with the more serious questions concerning the long-term health of the nation, which I’ve briefly mentioned elsewhere. That, in fact, is why there is a good case to be made for a grand coalition. (No, not that Grand Coalition.) Still, the ruling coalition and the opposition do deserve passing grades for this lesser of the two semesters.
* I’d be happy to check this if someone paid me for doing it. Otherwise, you’ll have to do it yourself, or accept my educated guess.
** By law, salaries of public servants in four categories require annual adjustments by separate legislation. Housekeeping matters of the Diet sometimes require legislative action, further inflating the number of bills passed in any given session.
*** The loss of gasoline surtaxes alone could reduce the public take by a trillion yen more or less.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
More Words of Wisdom from Our Justice Minister
Kunio Hatoyama, Justice Minister and LDP member in good standing, got together yesterday with his older brother Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ Director-General, to confirm plans to jointly set up the “Hatoyama Yūai Juku”(Hatoyama Private School of Comradeship). The school is intended to nurture future leaders by inculcating them with the ideals of “comradeship” as espoused by their grandfather and former Prime Minister Ichirō Hatoyama (1883-1959). It is not limited to political wannabies. Think, Boy Scouts for grownups.
Asked by reporters if they talked about a Grand Coalition (yes, that’s what they asked Yukio and Kunio Hatoyama), Kunio Hatoyama denied this and went on to explain:
“My brother and I are uniting on the basic of comradeship. It means that even if our opinions differ over the refueling operations, we are going to collaborate from the basic philosophical level.”
In other words, he is saying that they are two likeminded people, working together where the future of our nation is stake, agreeing to differ on specific issues: the two brothers look very much like a metaphor for what the public called for when it rejected the notion of a Grand Coalition. We want more of the same, but we also want choice.
No, I will not call this the wisdom of fools. That would be too… mean-spirited.
Asked by reporters if they talked about a Grand Coalition (yes, that’s what they asked Yukio and Kunio Hatoyama), Kunio Hatoyama denied this and went on to explain:
“My brother and I are uniting on the basic of comradeship. It means that even if our opinions differ over the refueling operations, we are going to collaborate from the basic philosophical level.”
In other words, he is saying that they are two likeminded people, working together where the future of our nation is stake, agreeing to differ on specific issues: the two brothers look very much like a metaphor for what the public called for when it rejected the notion of a Grand Coalition. We want more of the same, but we also want choice.
No, I will not call this the wisdom of fools. That would be too… mean-spirited.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Sōkagakkai Members Lie and Other Odds and Ends from the Latest Public Opinion Polls
Yomiuri releases its latest public opinion poll (taken 10-11 November) and the headline is: Majority favor refueling mission for first time(English version); 給油継続「賛成」５１％、の過半数…読売調査Japanese version. I’ll get to that later, but what caught my eye was this:
Q. Which party do you support now? Name one.
A. … New Kōmeitō: 2.7% …
Now the NK regularly pulls in 8 million votes, give or take a few hundred thousand. That’s about 8% of the adult population, and there can’t be that many non-Sōkagakkai members who vote for the NK and vice versa. (Why vote NK when you can vote for the real thing?) So there must be a lot of Sōkagakkaimembers lying about their choices or disproportionately refusing to respond. For the poll, as usual, 3,000 randomly sampled eligible voters (60.33% response rate; par for the course) were interviewed directly. It appears that many people still do not want to reveal their affiliation with that lay Nichiren sect.
Turning to the big picture, the support numbers for the LDP (34.3%, down from 37.8%), DPJ (22.5%, up from 18.0%), and No Preference (36.0%) (as well as the 60.3% response rate) reaffirm the basic electoral framework: support base among active voters for the LDP hovering around the mid-thirties and the DPJ around the low twenties, with the swing vote in the mid-thirties. Put the real NK supporters on top of the LDP base, and you can see that the DPJ has a huge task ahead if it is to topple the ruling coalition in any Lower House election. Since the DPJ party platform is more a matter of not being the LDP than the result of any meaningful ideological distinctions (which is why it manages to swing wildly on, for example, national security issues without falling apart), another massive leadership failure of Abe administration proportions is needed to pull off it off. It is no wonder that Ichiro Ozawa has scaled back DPJ ambitions for the next Lower House election to what he calls the “third best strategy”, i.e. winning more seats than the LDP.
Support for the Fukuda Cabinet has dropped from 59.1% to 52.2%. This is in marked contrast to the FNN-Sankei poll (10,11 November; headlined内閣支持率４１・１％に急落 世論調査 Cabinet Support Rate Suddenly Drops to 41.1% - note the contrast with the Yomiuri headline), where it registered an even more precipitous fall from 55.3% to 41.1%. I have no way of proving it, but I think that this difference has everything to do with Yomiuri’s strong support for the Grand Coalition (though it could not thoroughly convince the public that it was a good thing) and Sankei’s more skeptical approach to the issue and its generally more hawkish views (in contrast to those of Prime Minister Fukuda himself). Sampling may be random, but the response definitely is not, and the media doing the polling is responsible for that.
On the OEF-MIO refueling resumption bill, despite the controversy over allegations that the fuel oil was diverted to the Iraqi War, not to mention the ongoing scandal at the Ministry of Defense over bribery/procurement suspicions, both polls recorded small gains for the ruling coalition, giving majority support (Yomiuri 50.6%, Sankei 51.8%) for resumption, though substantial opposition remained (Yomiuri 40.3%, Sankei 38.1%). I believe that this confirms my earlier assumptions that the electorate has more or less collectively made up its mind on the issue, and that talk from the LDP for a 60%/two-thirds majority for a supermajority override vote and the DPJ that a Lower House override vote plus an upper House censure motion equals snap election is just that: talk.
Q. Which party do you support now? Name one.
A. … New Kōmeitō: 2.7% …
Now the NK regularly pulls in 8 million votes, give or take a few hundred thousand. That’s about 8% of the adult population, and there can’t be that many non-Sōkagakkai members who vote for the NK and vice versa. (Why vote NK when you can vote for the real thing?) So there must be a lot of Sōkagakkaimembers lying about their choices or disproportionately refusing to respond. For the poll, as usual, 3,000 randomly sampled eligible voters (60.33% response rate; par for the course) were interviewed directly. It appears that many people still do not want to reveal their affiliation with that lay Nichiren sect.
Turning to the big picture, the support numbers for the LDP (34.3%, down from 37.8%), DPJ (22.5%, up from 18.0%), and No Preference (36.0%) (as well as the 60.3% response rate) reaffirm the basic electoral framework: support base among active voters for the LDP hovering around the mid-thirties and the DPJ around the low twenties, with the swing vote in the mid-thirties. Put the real NK supporters on top of the LDP base, and you can see that the DPJ has a huge task ahead if it is to topple the ruling coalition in any Lower House election. Since the DPJ party platform is more a matter of not being the LDP than the result of any meaningful ideological distinctions (which is why it manages to swing wildly on, for example, national security issues without falling apart), another massive leadership failure of Abe administration proportions is needed to pull off it off. It is no wonder that Ichiro Ozawa has scaled back DPJ ambitions for the next Lower House election to what he calls the “third best strategy”, i.e. winning more seats than the LDP.
Support for the Fukuda Cabinet has dropped from 59.1% to 52.2%. This is in marked contrast to the FNN-Sankei poll (10,11 November; headlined内閣支持率４１・１％に急落 世論調査 Cabinet Support Rate Suddenly Drops to 41.1% - note the contrast with the Yomiuri headline), where it registered an even more precipitous fall from 55.3% to 41.1%. I have no way of proving it, but I think that this difference has everything to do with Yomiuri’s strong support for the Grand Coalition (though it could not thoroughly convince the public that it was a good thing) and Sankei’s more skeptical approach to the issue and its generally more hawkish views (in contrast to those of Prime Minister Fukuda himself). Sampling may be random, but the response definitely is not, and the media doing the polling is responsible for that.
On the OEF-MIO refueling resumption bill, despite the controversy over allegations that the fuel oil was diverted to the Iraqi War, not to mention the ongoing scandal at the Ministry of Defense over bribery/procurement suspicions, both polls recorded small gains for the ruling coalition, giving majority support (Yomiuri 50.6%, Sankei 51.8%) for resumption, though substantial opposition remained (Yomiuri 40.3%, Sankei 38.1%). I believe that this confirms my earlier assumptions that the electorate has more or less collectively made up its mind on the issue, and that talk from the LDP for a 60%/two-thirds majority for a supermajority override vote and the DPJ that a Lower House override vote plus an upper House censure motion equals snap election is just that: talk.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Media Talk about a Snap Election Should Die Down Any Minute… If It Hasn’t Already
And, like the also-ran Kyojingun/Giants in the off-season (the best free agents can look to the majors for more money, as well as added perks to ease the transition), there's little more that the Yomiuri can do to flog that half-dead horse of a Grand Coalition. The time for the big-time political game has passed, and both sides are nursing a variety of hurts; they will now play the statecraft game with the political financing (reporting) reform and other items of lesser import.
I believe even more strongly now that the refueling extension bill supermajority override and a subsequent Upper House motion of some kind are a done deal. The JASDF will continue to provide logistic support in Iraq. That is that, and the Japanese public will move on. Prime Minister Fukuda will walk through the next Summit in July, and possibly well beyond, barring catastrophic events - stuff happens, eventually; the DPJ needs to be patient.
What are the prospects for a sh**-fan collision though? For one, the Ministry of Defense needs a serious makeover; the MOD must bring closure to the scandals that revolve around the procurement system. That’s not an easy thing to do, but the good news for the Fukuda Cabinet (and for Japan) is that Defense Minister Ishiba has personally wanted to do it for years. A further silver lining for the administration is that everybody, including people at the dreaded Special Investigation Department at the Public Prosecutors Agency, seems to be talking their heads off, so there’s not likely to be much more in the way of surprise revelations to further deepen the crisis. (If criminal charges are brought against businesses other than the Yamada Yōkō group and Nihon Mirise, all bets are off.)
There’s also what looks at first glance like a delectable target of a Justice Minister who appears to suffer from serious self-awareness deficiencies. Unfortunately for the DPJ, expectations for a Japanese Justice Minister are low. In Japan, the Justice Ministry is where you park a long-serving, nondescript backbencher, the representative of a very junior coalition partner, or someone you need to do a favor on behalf of, and forget about him/her until the next Cabinet reshuffle. The Public Prosecutors Agency, nominally under the Justice Minister’s control, is actually a semi-autonomous institution that will quickly help you lose your Cabinet job if you intervene to exercise your political prerogatives. Instead, my guess is that any decision of serious import that require political determination is run quietly through the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the administrative Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary. Authoritative legal opinions are issued by the highest Japanese bureaucrat, the Director-General of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. So the U.S.SecretaryAttorney-General the Justice Minister is not. I don’t know what more Kunio Hatoyama can do before he loses his job. But it will be an implosion, not an explosion.
Yōichi Masuzoe, the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister, looks like a better target. Mr. Masuzoe, for all his media-attracting eloquence and formidable intelligence, does not have the executive experience nor appear to have a predilection for high-profile turnaround jobs, and is showing this. He may yet grow into the role; he still seems to be gyrating between belligerent arrogance and abject humility. Still, he - as well as the ruling coalition - will take some serious hits in March when the promissory notes that then Prime Minister Abe guaranteed on the 50,000,000 misfiled public pension accounts come due.
But I don't expect the real fireworks to start until well past St. Valentine’s Day, when the Diet must also deal with taxes and major tax-related issues such as the funding of the public pension system, as well as a myriad of major legislative initiatives.
ADD: Thank you, MTC, for the correction.
This post looks in essence like an earlier one of mine. Perhaps it is an unconscious excuse to write about the tragic-comic Justice Minister(s). For Mr. Hatoyama is a fascinating case of a legacy Diet member, possibly the most blue-blooded and glitteriest of all at that, going astray.
I believe even more strongly now that the refueling extension bill supermajority override and a subsequent Upper House motion of some kind are a done deal. The JASDF will continue to provide logistic support in Iraq. That is that, and the Japanese public will move on. Prime Minister Fukuda will walk through the next Summit in July, and possibly well beyond, barring catastrophic events - stuff happens, eventually; the DPJ needs to be patient.
What are the prospects for a sh**-fan collision though? For one, the Ministry of Defense needs a serious makeover; the MOD must bring closure to the scandals that revolve around the procurement system. That’s not an easy thing to do, but the good news for the Fukuda Cabinet (and for Japan) is that Defense Minister Ishiba has personally wanted to do it for years. A further silver lining for the administration is that everybody, including people at the dreaded Special Investigation Department at the Public Prosecutors Agency, seems to be talking their heads off, so there’s not likely to be much more in the way of surprise revelations to further deepen the crisis. (If criminal charges are brought against businesses other than the Yamada Yōkō group and Nihon Mirise, all bets are off.)
There’s also what looks at first glance like a delectable target of a Justice Minister who appears to suffer from serious self-awareness deficiencies. Unfortunately for the DPJ, expectations for a Japanese Justice Minister are low. In Japan, the Justice Ministry is where you park a long-serving, nondescript backbencher, the representative of a very junior coalition partner, or someone you need to do a favor on behalf of, and forget about him/her until the next Cabinet reshuffle. The Public Prosecutors Agency, nominally under the Justice Minister’s control, is actually a semi-autonomous institution that will quickly help you lose your Cabinet job if you intervene to exercise your political prerogatives. Instead, my guess is that any decision of serious import that require political determination is run quietly through the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the administrative Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary. Authoritative legal opinions are issued by the highest Japanese bureaucrat, the Director-General of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. So the U.S.
Yōichi Masuzoe, the Health, Labor and Welfare Minister, looks like a better target. Mr. Masuzoe, for all his media-attracting eloquence and formidable intelligence, does not have the executive experience nor appear to have a predilection for high-profile turnaround jobs, and is showing this. He may yet grow into the role; he still seems to be gyrating between belligerent arrogance and abject humility. Still, he - as well as the ruling coalition - will take some serious hits in March when the promissory notes that then Prime Minister Abe guaranteed on the 50,000,000 misfiled public pension accounts come due.
But I don't expect the real fireworks to start until well past St. Valentine’s Day, when the Diet must also deal with taxes and major tax-related issues such as the funding of the public pension system, as well as a myriad of major legislative initiatives.
ADD: Thank you, MTC, for the correction.
This post looks in essence like an earlier one of mine. Perhaps it is an unconscious excuse to write about the tragic-comic Justice Minister(s). For Mr. Hatoyama is a fascinating case of a legacy Diet member, possibly the most blue-blooded and glitteriest of all at that, going astray.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
How Many People Would Notice if No Laws Are Passed During This Diet Session?
If the current extraordinary Diet session, instead of being extended for 35 days, had lapsed today, the amendment to the law that expands assistance to victims of disasters would have been the only piece of legislation achieved, and yet another of my predictions, that the ruling coalition would wind up exercising the supermajority override vote on the new OEF-MIO refueling bill, would have failed to come true. But otherwise, would the Japanese national well-being be measurably affected for better or worse?
Yes, the media would be greatly concerned and would trot out an endless array of political commentators and other public figures to condemn the waste of public money and neglect of the public good and propose all manners of remedies, and intersperse them with interviews of the common folk dutifully expressing their displeasure at the political tomfoolery. But who other than the special interests involved (here I am not passing judgment on the validity of the respective claims on legislative attention and the public coffers), as well as alliance minders, would not be able then to afford to forget the matter, at least until the Diet resumes in the next regular session, sometime in January? And how many of those special interests would actually be worse off as the result of neglect? After all, there are many shades of desirability and necessity.
In fact, there appear to be few legislative needs that must be taken care of now. If no other laws are passed in the now customary long autumn session, many will be disappointed, some will be elated, but the net impact on the national well-being will be negligible. The LDP and DPJ are dithering in no small part because they can afford to. They are like two stags circling each other hoping that the other will lose nerve and back off. On the other hand, they have been working out compromises on a number of issues minor and not so minor - here, I am thinking of the reform of the political financing reporting system – and several of them appear ensured to end up in actual legislation, while the refueling renewal bill is highly likely to be the subject of the first supermajority override in Japanese history.
Yet there had been a lot of noise about the Diet being in session for a whole month without passing a single law (till yesterday) - a noise so loud, in fact, that a couple of old men (whom every news outlet tabloid and non- except the Yomiuri group named as Yomiuri's power behind the throne Tsuneo Watanabe and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori) convinced two other old men to get together to agree to a Grand Coalition or whatever they agreed to do but could not. And indeed there is nothing inherently wrong with the two majority parties uniting to form a single government, or a newspaper editorializing in favor of such an arrangement. (Japan got along quite comfortably for quite a while after the two conservative parties got together in 1955 to form an enduring absolute majority.)
However, when a newspaper not only advocates the political arrangement as such, but also uses its regular reporting to effect such an outcome, and more seriously actively works behind the scenes to push the agenda, then the newspaper itself becomes the news. And not to report such behind-the-scenes action is a form of self-censorship; not the way that the fourth estate is expected to function in a democracy.
Some would bring out a variation of the post-modern argument that there is no "objective viewpoint", while others would use examples such as anti-evolutionists and flat-earthers to endorse the media taking "a stand". And there is some plausibility to the statement that "once you know which way they're leaning it's easy to "tweak" the articles accordingly when reading them". However, these arguments cannot be conducted in the abstract; neither evolution theory nor creationism, for example, provides a valid analogy for a stand one way or other on the far-more debatable refueling operations. And the "tweaking" claim is hard to sustain when the media outlet in question is weeding out inconvenient facts and dressing up the remainder in the guise of straight reporting. Unless you follow the matter with particular attention or are blessed with omniscience, all too often, the best that you can do is to read the editorial, shrug, and say, "Well, Asahi/Yomiuri is saying that because…"
As Shisaku points out here, the bias becomes even more disguised (and selective) when it is filtered through the English-language media. But it is there at the source, which fact should be taken note of, particularly when the matter is of no little import. (Perhaps I should be writing this in Japanese.)
Going back to the mode of interaction between the two major parties, the real test awaits in the regular Diet session that will convene in January and run into the summer months. If nothing is done then, much time-limited legislation, including many temporary tax credits and deductions, will expire and the public will express its very real displeasure. The current extraordinary session is better regarded as the testing grounds for means of cooperation and competition, and even outright confrontation, and the gauging of the public response thereto.
Yes, the media would be greatly concerned and would trot out an endless array of political commentators and other public figures to condemn the waste of public money and neglect of the public good and propose all manners of remedies, and intersperse them with interviews of the common folk dutifully expressing their displeasure at the political tomfoolery. But who other than the special interests involved (here I am not passing judgment on the validity of the respective claims on legislative attention and the public coffers), as well as alliance minders, would not be able then to afford to forget the matter, at least until the Diet resumes in the next regular session, sometime in January? And how many of those special interests would actually be worse off as the result of neglect? After all, there are many shades of desirability and necessity.
In fact, there appear to be few legislative needs that must be taken care of now. If no other laws are passed in the now customary long autumn session, many will be disappointed, some will be elated, but the net impact on the national well-being will be negligible. The LDP and DPJ are dithering in no small part because they can afford to. They are like two stags circling each other hoping that the other will lose nerve and back off. On the other hand, they have been working out compromises on a number of issues minor and not so minor - here, I am thinking of the reform of the political financing reporting system – and several of them appear ensured to end up in actual legislation, while the refueling renewal bill is highly likely to be the subject of the first supermajority override in Japanese history.
Yet there had been a lot of noise about the Diet being in session for a whole month without passing a single law (till yesterday) - a noise so loud, in fact, that a couple of old men (whom every news outlet tabloid and non- except the Yomiuri group named as Yomiuri's power behind the throne Tsuneo Watanabe and former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori) convinced two other old men to get together to agree to a Grand Coalition or whatever they agreed to do but could not. And indeed there is nothing inherently wrong with the two majority parties uniting to form a single government, or a newspaper editorializing in favor of such an arrangement. (Japan got along quite comfortably for quite a while after the two conservative parties got together in 1955 to form an enduring absolute majority.)
However, when a newspaper not only advocates the political arrangement as such, but also uses its regular reporting to effect such an outcome, and more seriously actively works behind the scenes to push the agenda, then the newspaper itself becomes the news. And not to report such behind-the-scenes action is a form of self-censorship; not the way that the fourth estate is expected to function in a democracy.
Some would bring out a variation of the post-modern argument that there is no "objective viewpoint", while others would use examples such as anti-evolutionists and flat-earthers to endorse the media taking "a stand". And there is some plausibility to the statement that "once you know which way they're leaning it's easy to "tweak" the articles accordingly when reading them". However, these arguments cannot be conducted in the abstract; neither evolution theory nor creationism, for example, provides a valid analogy for a stand one way or other on the far-more debatable refueling operations. And the "tweaking" claim is hard to sustain when the media outlet in question is weeding out inconvenient facts and dressing up the remainder in the guise of straight reporting. Unless you follow the matter with particular attention or are blessed with omniscience, all too often, the best that you can do is to read the editorial, shrug, and say, "Well, Asahi/Yomiuri is saying that because…"
As Shisaku points out here, the bias becomes even more disguised (and selective) when it is filtered through the English-language media. But it is there at the source, which fact should be taken note of, particularly when the matter is of no little import. (Perhaps I should be writing this in Japanese.)
Going back to the mode of interaction between the two major parties, the real test awaits in the regular Diet session that will convene in January and run into the summer months. If nothing is done then, much time-limited legislation, including many temporary tax credits and deductions, will expire and the public will express its very real displeasure. The current extraordinary session is better regarded as the testing grounds for means of cooperation and competition, and even outright confrontation, and the gauging of the public response thereto.
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