Beauty Girls: Koizumi Shinjiro

Showing posts with label Koizumi Shinjiro. Show all posts

Six New Fredos

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

Fredo, you're nothing to me now. You're not a brother, you're not a friend. I don't want to know you or what you do.

- Michael Corleone, The Godfather, Part II (1974)

On Friday, six Democratic Party of Japan members of the House of Councillors voted against the ittai kaikaku reform bills, including the bill raising the consumption tax. These six defectors are new, not a part of the 12 DPJ members who left the party to join Ozawa Ichiro's People's Life First Party (33 days since its founding and still no party website) or the 3 who left to form the Green Wind caucus.

The six are:

Tokunaga Eri (Hokkaido district seat, elected in 2010)
Mito Masashi (Kanagawa district seat, elected in 2007)
Uematsu Emiko (Kagawa district seat, elected 2007)
Okubo Yukishige (Nagasaki district seat, elected 2007)
Arita Yoshibu (proportional list seat, elected 2010)
Tashiro Kaoru (proportional list seat, elected 2010)

Mito, Uematsu and Okubo face reelection next year,. The other members are in for the long haul. Like House of Representatives member Kawauchi Hiroshi, all six really belong inside the LF. However, they are far more useful to Ozawa as fifth columnists inside the DPJ. Through them he can still influence DPJ policies, even though he himself is no longer inside the DPJ.

The six cannot be expelled or even severely reprimanded. After the defections to the LF and the Green Wind in July, the DPJ is left with 85 members in its House caucus, only one member more than the Liberal Democratic Party. Were the six traitors of Friday to leave the DPJ, the party would fall to the #2 rank in the House, losing the majority of committee chairmanships and most likely the position of President of the House.

Ozawa knows the DPJ's loss of control of the House's chairmanships would eliminate his ability to influence politics. It should surprise no one that he has his acolytes remain inside the DPJ House of Councillors caucus.

Speaking of disobedience, the LDP has decided upon the punishments to be meted out to the seven of its members of its House of Representatives delegation who defied orders to abstain from voting on the no confidence motion against the Noda Cabinet. The seven will receive reprimands, the second strongest of the eight levels of punishment the party can mete out to its members. (J)

This slap on the wrist is surprising, as one of the sinners, Nakagawa Hidenao, was served with a six-month suspension of all party privileges for having abstained from the June House of Representatives vote on the consumption tax.

The leadership had solid reasons to be lenient. The participation of Shiozaki Yasuhisa in the mini-mutiny was a transparent threat of a greater hard-right rebellion against Machimura faction leader Machimura Nobutaka for his milquetoast leadership and his support of LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu. A severe punishment could also push Koizumi Shinjiro to run in the next election as an independent, an outcome the LDP is desperate to avoid. Koizumi the Younger (Koizumi IV) is, as Okumura Jun has put it, the LDP’s Chosen One, the prophesied future leader of the party.

It would furthermore be the height of hypocrisy for the LDP to punish the seven for voting for a no confidence motion only a day after Tanigaki and the LDP leadership abandoned plans to submit their own no confidence motion.

So the six DPJ House of Councillors and the seven LDP House of Representatives members, traitors to the party line each and every one, are virtually untouchable.

The weak responses by both the party leaderships presages further breakdowns in party discipline. An inability to get a straight answer from the LDP will endanger Prime Minister Noda’s plan to squeeze the LDP into voting for the bill authorizing the issuance of new bonds. The LDP leadership is eager for a quick deal on a redistricting bill – a necessity as the dissolution of the House and the calling for new elections would plunge the country into an irrevocable extra-constitutional state. However, if the LDP cannot guarantee party unity on the bond bill, it is of little use to the DPJ as a negotiating partner.

Of course, what can be said of the LDP applies equally, if not more so, to the DPJ. True to the nature of its former leader Ozawa, who recruited the majority of the DPJ’s serving Diet members, party members seem to have only the weakest of understandings of the fundamental importance of loyalty to the party. Disagreements over policy have thus led to a splintering of the party, not along the ideological lines the pundits predicted three years ago, but on the degree of loyalty to Ozawa the person.

Later - This post has been edited for clarity.

Koizumi Shinjiro Declares War On The LDP Leadership

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, 20: 16 Jiji is reporting 7 members of the LDP defied the order to leave the House of Representatives chamber -- choosing instead to stay and vote for the no confidence motion:

Nakagawa Hidenao
Shiozaki Yasuhisa
Suga Yoshihide
Koizumi Shinjiro
Kawai Katsuyuki
Shibamasa Masahiko
Matsunami Kenta

One former party secretary-general, one former Chief Cabinet Secretary, one former Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications and the most-talked about and highly-regarded of the freshmen...

Shiozaki is a bit of a surprise, to be sure...

20:08 For those keeping score, the parties sponsoring the motion hold only 67 seats. So we are looking at a pretty sizable band of rebels against both the DPJ and the LDP leaderships' orders.

19:57 - Final tally for the no confidence motion

86 votes for

246 votes against

19:55 - Still no confirmation from any of the major news outlets as to the numbers and names of the Democratic Party of Japan and LDP members who voted for the resolution...

19:41 - The House of Representatives has rejected the no confidence motion.

Mark it: 19:30 - From what I just saw on the live stream from the House of Representatives, Koizumi Shinjiro has just voted for the no confidence resolution, in defiance of the Liberal Democratic Partyleadership's orders to not show up for the vote.

Confirming...

Rushing Forward With No Confidence

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, On Sunday, I put forth the proposition that Koizumi Shinjiro's visit to Liberal Democratic Party headquarters accelerated LDP moves toward submitting either a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet or a censure motion against prime minister Noda Yoshihiko. Koizumi, walking very much in his father's footsteps and also reflecting his long stint in Washington, has become the face of the free market/low tax wing of the LDP, especially since The Big Man, Nakagawa Hidenao, has been put on ice.

In pushing a plant to threaten the PM with a no-confidence motion or censure, Koizumi was also the representative of the members of the LDP who had resigned themselves to the June 15 three-way LDP, the New Komeito and Democratic Party of Japan agreement to vote for consumption tax bill in both Houses of the Diet. Not a few in the LDP were sure the consumption tax issue would lead to the breakup of the DPJ.

The controversy over the raising of the consumption tax did indeed lead to a breakup, with Ozawa Ichiro leading his followers out of the DPJ. However, to the disappointment of those who thought the breakup would result in the DPJ-led coalition losing its majority in the House of Representatives, Ozawa led out of the DPJ only about half of the legislators purportedly under his influence -- well short of the number of rebels needed to transform the DPJ-led coalition into a minority government.

When Koizumi and his six youthful fellow LDP members bullrushed the office of the LDP party president, however, they were pushing on an open door. LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu has known that in order for him to win reelection in the party presidential election in September, he had to have something to show for his first term.

He had to foment a crisis, and in this month.

The dispute over the date of the House of Councillors vote on the consumption tax was too small potatoes for this purpose, at first glance. The LDP proposed to have the vote on the 10th; the DPJ and Prime Minister, wanting delay action in the Diet so that they might cut deals on legislation with Tanigaki's successor, proposed a vote on the 20th.

The DPJ offer was only an initial bargaining position, though. The party's negotiators, in talks with LDP and New Komeito representatives, indicated the August 10th date was acceptable. (J)

Taken aback, the LDP violated all normal negotiating procedures and proposed a vote on the 8th -- a counter proposal to which the DPJ, while indulging in the requisite amount of whining at the LDP's duplicity, agreed to yesterday. (J)

Of course, in the meantime, in the face of the DPJ's violent accommodation to every one of the LDP's wishes, the LDP presented a further demand -- that Prime Minister Noda make a public commitment (kakuyaku) to dissolve the Diet after the House of Councillors vote on the consumption tax legislation. Otherwise the LDP would submit either a no-confidence motion or a censure motion or both.

The Prime Minister, who if anything is calm and controlled in his responses, told the LDP yesterday that the dissolution of the Diet was his problem, the timing of which was up to him and nobody else (J). A seemingly now hysterical LDP leadership responded by vowing to go through with its threatened submission of a no-confidence motion or a censure motion today, and to renege on the June 15 agreement. (J)

It is a rare thing when the representatives of a small religious party have to pay a visit to the headquarters of a large secular party in order to tell the secular party "Calm down or else." Nevertheless, that is what leaders of the LDP's longtime ally the New Komeito, their faces grim, had to do last night (J). Presumably they explained to their LDP counterparts that if an election were held, the LDP-New Komeito alliance would lack a majority in either House of the Diet -- and that no third party would cut any deals on passage of legislation with an LDP that has a history of backing out of major, signed agreements.

So all by indications, Tanigaki has triggered the political crisis he needed. Unfortunately, it seems to be leading to his own private Waterloo, rather than the overthrow of the Noda government he has desired.

Later - This post has been edited for clarity.

Summer's Here! Let's All Topple The Noda Government!

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, According to the Sankei Shimbun, the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party is planning to submit a no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives and a censure motion in the House of Councillors on August 7, one day before the LDP and its ally the New Komeito hopes to have their members in the House of Councillors to vote in favor of bills submitted by said Noda government. The leadership of the LDP is willing to stay its hand on the two disciplinary actions, however, if the Prime Minister Noda promises to ask for a Diet dissolution before the end of this current Diet session runs out, which as of now will be on September 9. (J)

I know none of that scans.

Let us see if it makes sense in gangster-speak:

"We look forward to conducting business with you, as we have agreed, on Wednesday. However, on Tuesday, we are going to shoot you...unless, of course, you agree by Tuesday to shoot yourself sometime within the next 40 days...and we expect you to stand by that promise to shoot yourself, because if you don't, we'll shoot you."

Nonsense, of course -- but even more so because, as we know, Noda does not have a gun and the LDP, if it wants to shoot Noda, will have to borrow ammunition from the Democratic Party of Japan.

What the heck is going on here?

It seems the little visit Koizumu Shinjiro paid to LDP headquarters on August 1 with six of his fellow Young Turks has paid some dividends, as the leadership seems to be singing from Koizumi's hymnal. The seven striplings met with party president Tanigaki Sadakazu and told him had he to repudiate the June 15 agreement made with the DPJ on passing the government's reform bills, including the bill raising the consumption tax. Barring a repudiation of the agreement, the LDP had to wave a no-confidence motion or a House of Councillors censure motion in Noda's face. (J)

That the LDP senior leaders would roll over and offer up their throats to Koizumi -- who, one must remember, is in his first term -- is ludicrous. However, so is the position the LDP finds itself. It holds veto power over any non-budget legislation, due to the DPJ-People's New Party ruling coalition's holding only 88 seats in the 242-seat House of Councillors. In response, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko is sending to House only bills the LDP cannot refuse to support -- as they are drawn up based on promises the LDP made in its campaign manifesto. So while the LDP, which wants to act like an opposition party in the basest, most brain-dead way, by opposing the government at every turn, finds it has to accept what the government has been proposing.

The LDP leaders were not just pushed by Koizumi and the younger generation; the other opposition parties have presented their own threat to box in the LDP and the New Komeito. The seven opposition parties not party to the June 15 agreement met on August 3 and decided to submit their own no-confidence motion by June 8, in symbolic protest against the likely House of Councillors vote on that date raising the consumption tax. (J)

Pressed from both inside and outside, the LDP leadership is reduced to issuing absurd threats. Absurd not in the no-confidence motion's being dead upon delivery -- there is still a chance that some number of DPJ members greater than 15 will vote for the motion. Absurd in that the current government is following the LDP's policy script; a no-confidence motion cannot trigger a dissolution of the Diet; and the LDP leadership, to demonstrate it is still viable, must follow the lead of its most junior members and its pipsqueak political enemies.