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.

The End Game

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, the only three parties that matter -- a state of affairs so grating to the other parties in the Diet that the three leftist microparties and the one libertarian miniparty are joining hands to protest the "price fixing going on behind closed doors" (J) -- are putting the final touches on a final agreement on the shakai hosho zei ittai kaikaku an, the bills enabling the combined reforms of social security and tax systems. (J)

There are some hurdles standing in the way of the three parties coming to an agreement by the Prime Minister's deadline of June 15. The LDP wants the Noda government to repudiate the DPJ's 2009 manifesto pledge to rewrite pension law so as to guarantee that all pensioners receive a minimun 70,000 yen per month from the national pension plan. The LDP and the New Komeito together want Noda to repudiate the DPJ manifesto pledge to repeal the special eldercare system for persons over 75 years of age, a terribly unpopular and initially confusing program of mandatory healthcare prepayment the two parties sweated blood to pass when they held the reins of government. The three parties are also at loggerheads over what, if anything, they should do to lessen the impact of the imposition of the consumption tax on those person living at or below the poverty line.

Now according to the news noise machine, Prime Minister Noda is desperate and willing to sacrifice the DPJ's identity (E) or prepared to discard policies intrinsic to the DPJ's unity (E) all for the sake of winning the LDP's and the New Komeito's votes in favor of the passage of the bills raising the consumption tax.

Maybe. It depends on what one believes DPJ policies are.

If one takes the simplistic route, that DPJ policies are all the policies listed in the 2009 and 2010 manifestos, then the above assertions are true.

If, however, one takes the position that the policies listed in the 2009 manifesto were the ones Ozawa Ichiro tossed together trying to buy the support of every special interest the LDP, in its internal shift to becoming a modern, urban-based party, had left lying in the dust, without any concern as to whether the resulting program was internally consistent or affordable -- i.e., LIES -- then:

a) the DPJ is a party of lies and liars, and thus their promises are worthless rhetoric, not policies, or

b) the promises made in the 2009 manifesto, which Kan Naoto tried desperately to render more concrete and believable in the 2010 manifesto, were never the policies of the DPJ, just electoral dandruff clinging to Ozawa Ichiro's jacket.

When Ozawa loyalist and true believer Kawauchi Hiroshi wails about the impending deal on the sheaf of bills reforming the pension and tax systems...

"The LDP's proposal is unacceptable. If we were to agree, the DPJ would become the LDP."

...he is not only showing that he is more a courtier than a politician but also a poor student of history. Fiscal consolidation, realistic pension funding schemes and a willingness to sacrifice growth for stability are core policy positions of the original DPJ. These were the principles undergirding the August 2005 party platform, under then party leader, now Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya.

That DPJ co-founder Hatoyama Yukio forgets what he used to believe and defends the 2009 manifesto as holy writ (J) is neither implausible nor particularly significant. Like the White Queen, Hatoyama can believe a half a dozen impossible things before breakfast.

What the representatives of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito are going to be banging heads over today are the remnants of the fight. The DPJ has a rather weaker position due to the PM's having set a deadline. This prevents the DPJ from exercising its ultimate weapon of extending the Diet session, forcing everyone to just sit on their tailbones until the LDP and the New Komeito fall into bickering in between themselves over just who is preventing the passage of their favorite bits of legislation. It should surprise no one that the DPJ has chosen this moment to float a trial balloon for a radical restructuring of both the LDP's and the DPJ's plans to reform the House of Representatives which hews close to what the New Komeito has been proposing and which would mess up the proportional seat voting for the LDP (E) -- just at the moment the LDP is showing strength in that half of the ballot.

All could go haywire at the last moment. Someone could say something untoward about someone else's sister, leading to a termination of negotiations.

All indications are, however, is that what we are seeing is the end game, one where the LDP and the New Komeito will wander away from the table having agreed to have their members vote with the government on a raft of bills, with neither the promise for elections nor the Noda repudiation of Ozawa Ichiro which the two parties had been demanding.

Very Kind Of Them #7

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The nice folks over at The Point have published a short piece I have written on the two main political circus events of last weekend. (Link)

[Yes, yes, the term is marunomi, not nomikomi. I will get that fixed.]

One correspondent drew an immediate corollary to the assertions made in second half of the piece, namely that the three major parties -- the Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito -- now have a strong incentive to work together in the Diet, proving to the populace that they can get things done, this in order to counter the drawing power of Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no Kai.

Already a great deal of positive movement seems to be afoot. Contrary to negative predictions of train wrecks in the Diet made prior to the opening of the regular session, including one made by yours truly, the DPJ and LDP-New Komeito alliance are cutting deals on specific pieces of legislation.

The drafts of three controversial bills have already either been signed off on or are near to closing:

- A draft of a postal counter-reform bill (E)

- The New Komeito's draft bill reducing of the remuneration of central government bureaucrats by an average of 7.8%, a draft that has the DPJ's ally, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) hissing mad (J)

- A draft revision of the law on dispatched workers in which the DPJ is following the lead of the LDP (J)

As for the crucial bill on reapportionment of Diet seats (crucial in that the current apportionment is unconstitutional), the DPJ is playing around with both LDP and New Komeito ideas in order drive a wedge in between the two opposition partners, making them both more amenable to a DPJ-proposed compromise. The DPJ has already submitted a draft bill taking the LDP's proposal to eliminate the five smallest districts in the nation (the so-called "+0/-5 solution") and bolting on to it the DPJ's manifesto proposal to cut 80 proportional seats -- a bill that if passed into law would favor the election of DPJ and LDP candidates but devastate the New Komeito. At the same time, the DPJ is listening very carefully to the New Komeito proposal to chuck the d'Hondt method of awarding proportional seats in favor of the Additional Member System (hirei daihyo renyosei), which, if it had been in use during the August 2009 House of Representatives election, would have left the DPJ still winning a majority of seats, would have more than doubled the number of seats won by the New Komeito and the Communists and would have left the LDP a skeleton. (J)

With the looming possibility of the emergence over the next few months of a third force in Japanese politics -- i.e., a non-LDP alternative to the DPJ -- a lot of otherwise unfocused LDP minds are focusing on passing an electoral reform bill sooner, rather than later.

Storm Clouds Gathering, But To What End?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Today the Diet opens its 180th regular session. It promises to be a murderous one, with absolutely no quarter being given by or cooperation coming from the opposition Liberal Democratic, New Komeito and Your parties.

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko has emanated an aura of preternatural calm in advance of his policy speech today but it masks an intense amount of pressure upon him and his Cabinet. To every single piece of legislation or proposed legislation there is heated, almost hysterical opposition, not only between the ruling coalition and the opposition, but between the coalition partners and even between large segments of the Diet membership of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. Even the budget, which would normally be guaranteed passage by the DPJ's huge majority in the House of Representatives, is threatened by its contents, most particularly the plan to restart construction of the Yamba Dam -- a plan that is anathema to what seems a clear majority of DPJ Diet members (just why the Noda government caved in to Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism pressure on this issue late last year never made the pages or the programs of the mainstream media).

The Fall 2011 extraordinary session saw a miserable 34% passage rate among bills presented to the Diet, the worst rate of bill passage seen since the Heisei Era began. The upcoming regular session, with its series of extremely controversial and radical bills, may end up deadlocked at an even lower level of success.

The question on everyone's lips is whether or not a state of crisis in this upcoming session of the Diet will trigger a House of Representatives election.

Three scenarios predominate:

1) The House of Representatives refuses to consider or rejects the debt ceiling and law modification legislation necessary to implement the Fiscal 2012 budget, triggering a deadlock so tight the prime minister must call an election (a dream of the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party).

2) The Noda government negotiates a settlement with the LDP and the New Komeito whereby they will band together to pass the budget enabling legislation and the raising of the consumption tax in return for a dissolution of the Diet and an election (a dream of political journalists).

3) Internal dissension within the DPJ over the consumption tax rise grows so fevered that Prime Minister Noda, in a fit of pique, calls an election to rid the party of its of its anti-tax faction (the dream of those who believe Ozawa Ichiro is the black hand behind all of the DPJ's internal problems).

Arithmetic, Ozawa's ongoing trial and recent polling results would argue for deals being struck, possible leading to or made after the toppling of Tanigaki Sadakazu from his perch atop the LDP.

If an election were held prior to the predicted end of the regular session of the Diet and/or with no important legislation passed, the DPJ would lose a huge number of seats, particularly in the rural districts. It was a once-in-a-half-century change of heart on the part of voters that enabled the DPJ to capture these bastions of LDP power in 2009. The party would be loath to part with them.

As for the internal divisions of the DPJ, they are very much as "all bark and no bite" affair. The most loudly barking groups in the party are those most vulnerable to losing their seats in the next election (hence the volume of their barking). They know quite well that if they gum up the works on consumption tax legislation or Japan's entering into negotiations on joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership so much so that Prime Minister Noda feels compelled to hold an election, they are electoral toast. The direct followers of or those ready to bend an ear to Ozawa Ichiro, who love to look around the room and admire their numbers whenever Ozawa deigns to bless them with his words of political wisdom, are also numbly aware that any breakaway party with Ozawa at its head or under his thrall will get thrashed in an election.

Furthermore, neither the DPJ nor the LDP want to go before the voters right now. In a stunning recent poll by the Mainichi Shimbun only 17% of the voters supported the DPJ and 16% supported the LDP (E). The two major parties are terrified of non-mainstream parties, either the Your Party or the proto-national party being formed by Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru (J). Even the normally lock-step the-LDP-is-my-party-right-or-wrong Yomiuri Shimbun is terrified of the prospects of a populist revolution and is counseling the LDP to get off its duff and cooperate with the DPJ-led government (E).

So much thunder and lightning will be evident today and through the next two weeks, as the governing and opposition parties get their turns at the rostrum.

Whether the typhoon will bear down upon the land, however, remains surprisingly uncertain.