Today
(Nov. 12), the Tokyo High Court rejected the special prosecutors’ appeal and
upheld Ichiro Ozawa’s acquittal of charges of violating the Political Funds
Control Act. This did not come as a surprise since legal experts had tended to
expect that outcome, particularly after the prosecutors had not been able to secure
a review of the evidence by the High Court. The prosecutors had already shown
some reluctance in deciding to seek to overturn the initial verdict; it is
likely that they will decline to pursue the case further in the Supreme Court.
Notwithstanding the likelihood of this contingency, there had been relatively
little mainstream media speculation* of any role for Ozawa in the ongoing
efforts to present a Third Force alternative to the status quo or in the
post-election political landscape, where neither a LDP-Komeito coalition government
nor an unlikely continuation of the current ruling coalition between the DPJ
and the People’s New Party PNP will command a majority in the HOC, a situation
that is unlikely to change after the 2013 HOC election barring more thoroughgoing
political realignment.
Looking
at the numbers alone, this does not make sense. Ichiro Ozawa’s People’s Life
First (LF) has 49 Diet members in its fold, 37 in the House of Representatives (HOR)
and 12 in the House of Councilors (HOC). Many of the nine members of the Kizuna
Party, who bolted the DPJ before Ozawa to escape supporters’ wrath at the tax
hike, are believed to be associated with him. (Ozawa himself had his hand virtually
forced by the followers who were poised to leave the ship without him.) Even
without the five, the LF has the third largest contingency in the Diet, behind
the DPJ and LDP, and dwarfs the other upstarts and, in HOR, Komeito as well.
However,
there’s a major downside for any would-be collaborators, including Toru
Hashimoto and Shintaro Ishihara, the two people who are emerging as the key figures
in the immediate future of the Third Force movement. It is a downside so big
that it has kept the mainstream media from spending much time on Ozawa’s post-acquittal
prospects. Or so I think. Let me explain.
First,
joining forces with Ozawa carries the taint of the old-school politics from
which first the DPJ and now the Third Force movements are trying to dissociate from.
Just defending an association with Ozawa will be a time-consuming negative and
a drag on political momentum. For the acquittal will not reward Ozawa with a
fully clean bill of health. The court of first instance made it obvious that it
was merely giving him the benefit of the doubt regarding his understanding and knowledge
of the nature of the inscription in question. Moreover, the mysterious
maneuvers around the funding of the nine-figure real estate transaction will
continue to resonate with the broader doubts around his financial and real
estate holdings as well as the massive political funds, part of it coming from
the proto-DPJ, squirreled away and folded into his personal fiefdom prior to
the 1998 merger. Ozawa can bring the matter to political closure if he successfully
defends himself in testimony before the appropriate Diet committee, an act that
he has steadfastly refused to do and is unlikely to do any time soon.
Second,
the sheer magnitude of the Ozawa team acts as a deterrent in itself. His
minions easily outnumber the collective membership of the upstarts, who would
not want to be at a numerical disadvantage going into the HOR election. At a
minimum, most if not all of Ozawa’s HOR members will have to be accommodated in
any coordination to maximize the elective value of the votes that the various
Third Force movements can muster in the single-seat districts.
Third,
and this is a related point, Ozawa has shown a repeated knack for dominating
his political space—until he winds up wrecking it over the long- or not so
long-run. Hashimoto and Ishihara, two of the most dominant and openly combative
personalities on the Japanese political scene should have enough time
cohabiting, if ever. Adding Ozawa to the mix comes across as preposterous.
Plus, Ishihara has expressed his unwillingness to work with Ozawa on multiple
occasions. Your Party will also flinch at an association with Ozawa.
Finally,
it is unclear how much mojo Ozawa will retain post-election. His forces range
from the few members of his entourage that have stuck with him through the
years to the horde of vulnerable newbies fleeing what they saw as a ship
sinking under the weight of the consumption tax hike legislation and the
fallout from the Fukushima-daiichi accident. If conventional wisdom prevails,
their HOR numbers—and their power to help elect a prime minister and pass budgets
and legislation—will be greatly diminished. And the remainder will show little
of the kind of policy spark that can draw media attention in the way that the
new guard in the DPJ did in the years leading up to the 2009 takeover.
Of
course there will be a minor flood of media reports over the first few workdays,
and another, smaller burst when the public prosecutor formally folds (or,
improbably, files an appeal with the Supreme Court). However, but I expect the excitement
to die quickly, leaving the Third Force and the mainstream media to relegate Ozawa
and his followers to the margins of the political story through the year’s end
and the coming year.**
Sidebar:
Some people, I’m sure, will revive anti-Ozawa conspiracy theories. First, the indictment:
No way, in my view. Too many people, including two private lawyers who have no personal
reasons to bear the brunt of the burden of the conspiracy, have to be in on the
lowdown to make it work. That’s the same basic flaw of most conspiracy theories.
Second, the media: Yes, sort of, but what there is, Ozawa has all but asked for
it. I think it is true that the mainstream media and much of the tabloids/weeklies
world do not like Ozawa, and I am sure that this affects how they report (or
not) stories around him. But there are the facts. The money trail is odd, one
that Yukio Edano for one in the DPJ had talked about openly even before the
legal dam broke; likewise are his real estate transactions using political funds.
On a less unsavory front, his penchant for setting up new political parties
then wrecking them and shedding allies along the way, is well-chronicled. And
when it comes to doing something with all this smoke, well, a little bit of
public communications i.e. massaging/messaging the media could come in handy.
Instead, Ozawa has been one of the most uncommunicative public figures on the
Japanese political landscape, willing to open up only under his own terms, only
on the subject of his choice, and if at all possible only before a uniformly
favorable audience. This is not surprising for a man who lacks facility with
words, clams up in the face of verbal challenges, and has stated a dislike for
the staple of politicians: pumping-the-flesh, good old-fashioned election
campaigning. It is surprising for a man who continues to seek elective office. The
media is not likely to give its subjects the benefit of the doubt; Ozawa
practically ensures that. It’s more bias than conspiracy. I suspect many of you
already knew this story; it still bears mentioning, I think, on the occasion of
what is likely to be his ultimate release from the criminal courts, but not the
court of public opinion.
* The metropolitan
tabloids, “sports” sheets, and weekly magazines, which cannot get enough of facts,
factoids, and often lurid speculation around Ozawa, are another matter. However,
their readership and, apparently, influence on TV political reports are
significantly smaller.
** This is
not to deny the possibility of the LF playing a PNP/SDP-like role if the
numbers add up just so.
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