Fukuda’s resignation and politics in Japan: brief thoughts
Well the inevitable happened on Monday with the announcement of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s resignation through a press conference in the evening. He was less than 1 year into his tenure at the time of his resignation. His approval rating had dipped to 29% and the main reason he gave for leaving his position was that he could no longer control the Diet (the Japanese parliament). I wasn’t going to write about this initially, but thought I would share my thoughts on the state of Japanese politics currently, which is in more stagnation than the economy here.
The way I see it, there are 2 main problems with politics in Japan at the moment. The first is that the Prime Minister doesn’t really control the country; all the power is with the party. While this can change a little form PM to PM (Junichiro Koizumi springs to mind as someone who forced through reforms), it is the exception to the rule. Fukuda was, as his predecessor Abe was, merely a spokesman for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan. They make the policies and he reads them out to the public. So while the leaders change, the message is still the same. In Fukuda’s case, when he came to power some thought things would be different but as the months went by they realised that nothing was changing and the party line was not changing. When their popularity goes down, the party will force a PM out so they can get someone new in, and thus the circle starts again. I think the successor to Fukuda will be taking a poisoned chalice, and whoever it is will struggle to be in the same position in another 12 months time, merely because of the fact that things will not change.
And a lack of change is the other main problem. While there is a main opposition party here in Japan (the Democratic Party of Japan, or DPJ), they have the same old stuffy politicians offering pretty much the same policies as the incumbent LDP. No group is offering a viable alternative to the status quo which is creating a lot of voter apathy. Recent local elections have had very low turnouts, especially among the young. If as rumoured, there will be a general election before the year is out, a lot of work is going to have to be done to get anyone interested and wanting to vote. This morning, Yuriko Koike was named as someone who might be running for PM against Taro Aso. It looks like half of the prefectures have already made up their mind to support Aso though, and I just don’t see the LDP lawmakers making the next PM of Japan a woman.
Regardless of who becomes the next Prime Minister and who wins the general election this year (if it takes place), I sincerely doubt you are going to see any real changes in the politics and government actions in Japan.
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dang, japan changes prime ministers like some people change underwear. maybe they’d have better luck following suite with the philippines–just elect movie stars since the position is really a puppet one anyways!