There’s really not much to write about Japanese politics these days. The Hatoyama caper (I’ve written a brief explanation at the bottom of this post) would have been a major political story if it had occurred last year, when the Aso administration and the LDP still had a good chance of retaining a Lower House majority. Now, it’s a mere side show. If this were chess, the LDP would be a queen down; losing a bishop would be the least of its worries.
That being said, I am sure that this incident—off-beat appointee causes incident; hands-off Prime Minister allows matters to fester; situation blows up, leaving egg on Prime Minister’s face—will be recorded in the post mortem as symptomatic of Taro Aso’s personal failings. Most recently, one of his Upper House friends that he appointed as one of three Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries—the most important sub-cabinet political appointments available—lost his job after he used an official JR pass on a sleep-over golfing trip with a married woman*. Aso’s behavior followed more or less the same pattern then. In fact, he initially pretended to accept the DCCS’s claims of “health reasons” for his resignation. More broadly, I’ve talked before about how his bureaucratic appointments were not paying off. (Yes, I still owe LB (or was it T. Greer?) an explanation about that.) Aso is just not a good judge of talent, nor does he have the ruthlessness to chop heads when they do not measure up.
But is this merely a personal problem? I also believe, as I briefly referred to at the end of this post, is that it will be remembered as a common thread that ran through the last three, short-lived, administrations of the post-1955 LDP era. It all seems to spell the end of an era, showing up as the writing on the wall.
* Let’s call it: Woodgate! DCCS Yoshitada Konoike, not coincidentally, had already been reprimanded early in the year for giving the same woman a key to his Tokyo apartment provided by the Diet.
Kunio Hatoyama is a well-travelled politician, having migrated from the New Liberal Club to the LDP (the mighty Takeshita faction) to the New Frontier Party (Ozawa et al) to the Democratic Party (with his brother Yukio), and back to the LDP again, where he now resides. There have been a couple of stints in between as an independent. He is definitely one who marches to his own drum. In his latest incarnation as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, he has gone after Japan Post, currently on the road to privatization, and its CEO Yoshifumi Nishikawa for a bundled real estate sale to ORIX, whose chairman had been Prime Minister Koizumi’s private-sector point man on his privatization drive, as well as the partial demolition of its Taisho-era Tokyo headquarters. (It’s actually a drab, unimaginative specimen of mostly historic value.) He has vowed that he will not authorize Nishikawa’s reappointment as CEO. This has pitted him against Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, who will exercise the government’s right as the sole shareholder to appoint the CEO, as well the Prime Minister himself, who is reportedly in favor of reappointment. The majority of the LDP probably also supports reappointment, if only to avoid offending big business—which offered up Nishikawa for the job in the first place and is generally in favor of the Koizumi reform process.
I expect a face-saving resolution that keeps Nishikawa on while allowing Hatoyama to claim partial victory by requiring Japan Post to amend its ways. But that’s just me sayin’.
Showing posts with label Kunio Hatoyama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kunio Hatoyama. Show all posts
Friday, June 05, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Hatoyama Beats Okada 124-95 (One Abstention, One Invalid Vote)
As so often has been the case, I failed to call it. Having said that…
It’s a secret ballot so we can’t know for sure, but based on the surveys that the mainstream media conducted in the lead-up to the vote, Hatoyama appears to have won thanks to a big lead in the Upper House vote. Okada seems to have at least held his own in the Lower House, whose members were more mindful of the upcoming election than their Upper House counterparts, only half of whom will face the public next year. Hatoyama likely held onto all of his group’s 30 votes as well as most of Ozawa’s 50 votes, so that was a huge head start against his independent opponent. Media surveys indicate that farther away from Ozawa’s group they were the less they preferred Hatoyama.
The question, of course, is: Will the sockpuppet (傀儡政権) trope stick? The media typically gives a new leader a grace period during which it says only nice things. (Remember when the chairman of Sharp, in deep trouble at the time, elevated a board member who was a journalist with no business experience to the chairman’s position and placed his own son, who had been placed on a special fast track, as president/CEO and the media hummed long to the company tune?) This may last only few days, but it’s important in Hatoyama’s case, because this is his best chance to establish himself as the real face of the DPJ. The polls will give him and the DPJ some momentum; it’s up to him to keep the snowball rolling.
Can Hatoyama do it? I noticed that he was a better speaker than I’d remembered. He has a better way with words than Okada. He also looked visibly animated during the DPJ election proceeding, as he no longer had to speak on behalf of the Ozawa DPJ. Speaking of whom, Ozawa must play his part by making himself scarce—something he has little trouble managing to do. In fact, this is the most important part of the DPJ electoral scenario.
This was a most civil election held between two highly civil candidates. It was definitely not politics as usual. The prospects of an imminent takeover must also have helped.
It’s a secret ballot so we can’t know for sure, but based on the surveys that the mainstream media conducted in the lead-up to the vote, Hatoyama appears to have won thanks to a big lead in the Upper House vote. Okada seems to have at least held his own in the Lower House, whose members were more mindful of the upcoming election than their Upper House counterparts, only half of whom will face the public next year. Hatoyama likely held onto all of his group’s 30 votes as well as most of Ozawa’s 50 votes, so that was a huge head start against his independent opponent. Media surveys indicate that farther away from Ozawa’s group they were the less they preferred Hatoyama.
The question, of course, is: Will the sockpuppet (傀儡政権) trope stick? The media typically gives a new leader a grace period during which it says only nice things. (Remember when the chairman of Sharp, in deep trouble at the time, elevated a board member who was a journalist with no business experience to the chairman’s position and placed his own son, who had been placed on a special fast track, as president/CEO and the media hummed long to the company tune?) This may last only few days, but it’s important in Hatoyama’s case, because this is his best chance to establish himself as the real face of the DPJ. The polls will give him and the DPJ some momentum; it’s up to him to keep the snowball rolling.
Can Hatoyama do it? I noticed that he was a better speaker than I’d remembered. He has a better way with words than Okada. He also looked visibly animated during the DPJ election proceeding, as he no longer had to speak on behalf of the Ozawa DPJ. Speaking of whom, Ozawa must play his part by making himself scarce—something he has little trouble managing to do. In fact, this is the most important part of the DPJ electoral scenario.
This was a most civil election held between two highly civil candidates. It was definitely not politics as usual. The prospects of an imminent takeover must also have helped.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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