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.

Taking Up Sides Against The Family

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Both the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan suffered breakdowns in party discipline in last night's no confidence vote.

As I noted in my live blogging of last night's vote, seven members of the LDP remained in the chamber and voted for the no confidence motion:

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

Disciplining the first four will be difficult. Nakagawa is already serving a six-month suspension of party privileges for having absented himself from the consumption tax bill vote in June. What to do now -- extend his suspension to a year?

Shiozaki presents an equally difficult conundrum. As a card-carrying member of the "Friends of Shinzo" -- the coterie of fanatabulist radicals who seized control of the government after their leader, Abe Shinzo, was elected prime minister -- he represents the vanguard of what has been a heretofore largely silent segment of the LDP's support base: the haters of postwar Japan as it is. Punishing Shiozaki severely threatens the unity of the Machimura Faction, which while ruled by a dove is filled with hawkish opponents of the current leadership group, its policies and its tactics.

As for Koizumi Shinjiro, he is a superstar, with the looks and the hooks to bring the house down. He has been among the LDPs most effective critics of the DPJ, from the very first weeks of the DPJ's turn as the party in power. He is a fourth-generation lawmaker, who won his father's district without his father lifting a finger to help him, a brilliant impromptu speaker and a winner in a year when the LDP first-termers had nearly zero chance of election.

He does not need the LDP: the LDP needs him.

On the DPJ side, there were two members who voted for the resolution: Kobayashi Koki, whom I disparaged yesterday, and Koizumi Toshiaki, who spent seven years cooling his heels after two terms as a DPJ district Representative. He was revived in the landslide election of 2009 as the Representative for Ibaraki District #3.

In addition to these two turncoats, who submitted their resignations from the party prior to last night's vote, five members of the DPJ's House of Representatives delegation called in sick.

Former Prime Minister Hata Tsutomu's illness was real: he has been hospitalized since February with an undisclosed illness.

Four other members, however, came down with illnesses of convenience:

Hatoyama Yukio
Kawauchi Hiroshi
Nakagawa Osamu
Tsuji Megumu

Kawauchi (Kagoshima District #1, 5th term) has been the human quote machine for a news media complex eager to find members of the DPJ willing to talk trash about the leadership. He has been a DINO (Democrat In Name Only) for as long as anyone can remember. His personal website (Link) has as its top line Kokumin seikatsu ga dai'ichi, the Ozawa Ichiro-dreamed up 2009 electoral slogan and the name of Ozawa's new party.

Kawauchi can and should be joining one of Ozawa's parties. However, he is far more useful to Ozawa as a DPJ irritant. The party should expel him. However, to expel Kawauchi and not expel Hatoyama will be difficult to explain.

Nakagawa is in his second term, having served from 2003-05 as a proportional seat member from the Kinki bloc. His career was revived by the 2009 landslide, where he became the district seat holder for Osaka District #18.

Tsuji Megumu has had a nearly carbon copy career, serving in a Kinki bloc proportional seat in 2003-2005. He lost his seat in the 2005 LDP landslide, then failed as the DPJ's candidate for mayor of Osaka City that same year. His career was also revived by the 2009 landslide, where he won the district seat for Osaka District #17.

The latter two mid-career veterans, with only a single district victory under their belts, have to be looking at the popularity of Hashimoto Toru's Osaka Ishin no kai and figuring that they have no chance at reelection as Democrats. Unfortunately for the pair, they have no chance of reelection as independents. If they had remained faithful to the leadership of the Democratic Party, then they might have at least had the chance to return to the Diet from the proportional list.

That is all water under the bridge now. The DPJ's local party organization will not support them as district candidates for the next election, ending their political careers.

As for Hatoyama, he is a special case. He is the co-founder of the DPJ. He and his mother bankrolled the party in its early years, when corporations would turn their backs on the party. He will be disciplined but in an insufficiently severe way, making it impossible to put a lid on the loquacious Kawauchi.

However, Hatoyama has gone too far. He has been both treacherous and useless. His tenure as prime minister was a disaster for the party, laying the groundwork for the party's losing control of the House of Councillors and thus the ability to set the political agenda. Since his downfall, an unrepentant Hatoyama has never ceased engaging in limp but still corrosive efforts to undermine his successors. He also encouraged Ozawa Ichiro, a man who has never understood the concept of party loyalty, to cause mischief.

Hatoyama should probably be considered the Fredo Corleone of the DPJ. He's family, so whadda ya gonna do? He is safe "as long as Mama is still alive" -- i.e., until such time as the current Diet is dissolved. The mainline leadership of the party will have to keep him at arm's length, but no further. After the Diet is dissolved, however, the present leadership will very probably take him fishing.

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.

Giving The LDP Some Credit, Sort Of

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I have an incurable habit of dumping on the Liberal Democratic Party,

My latest bad joke at the LDP's expense?

"You know, there's an old saying:

Fool me once, shame on you

Fool me twice...I'm LDP!"

even as it has fallen out of grace and into the unbearable position of an opposition party.

I cannot, however, fault the LDP for lax discipline. While the Democratic Party of Japan gave DPJ members of the House of Representatives who voted against consumption tax bill two month suspensions of party privileges -- save for former party leader Hatoyama Yukio, who earned a six month suspension -- and a stiff warning to the DPJ representatives who absented themselves from the crucial vote, the LDP leadership dropped an anvil on former party secretary-general Nakagawa Hidenao for absenting himself from the consumption tax vote: a six month suspension of party privileges. (J)

For Nakagawa, who has tried to keep the flame of Koizumiism alive inside the LDP, abstaining from the vote was a matter of principle. Indeed, in an ideologically reordered political world, Nakagawa would be with his intellectual comrades in the Your Party, rather than waging a quixotic battle against the LDP's mishmash of laissez faire capitalism, paternalism, state capitalism and socialism.

Such is the logic of party discipline, however, that free thinkers face punishment for not following orders.