The Dilemma of Koizumifs Victory

The victory of Koizumi presents a dilemma. During the election campaign, Koizumi repeatedly said that he would firmly push forward greforms,h and if the LDP opposed this, then he would break up the party and create a new LDP.

However, since Koizumi was in fact fighting in the election for the sake of the LDP, this claim is deceitful. Koizumi in fact has no desire or clear basis to gchange the LDP.h

According to Koizumifs confused reasoning, since any LDP candidates opposed to his greformisth line would be rejected by the people and soundly defeated in the election, the gforces of resistanceh [to reform] within the party would have no choice but to fall in line. But the reactionaries within in the LDP with a strong vested interest in the status quo cannot be dealt with so easily.

No one can guarantee that Koizuimifs popularity and the support for greformh can be maintained when the severity of the recession and the gpainh he has spoken of becomes clear.

If the recession gets worse--even if the greforms are postponed--it will be clear as day that there will be pressure to seek some relief and economic recovery; if Koizumi gresistsh this he will represent the gforce of resistanceh and will likely be thrown out of power (just as former prime minister Hashimoto was only recently).

Koizumi, however, is very much a Liberal Democrat. As a representative of the faction that steadily supported Prime Minister Morifs government, he is firmly within the LDP power structure. There is no reason that such a person would champion the dissolution of the party.

If Koizumi possessed the courage to break up the LDP, from the very beginning he would have done so. He would have strived to at least replace a large number of candidates, or eliminate the names of candidates tied vested interests from the list of proportional districts.

Of course, however, Koizumi did not even lift a finger to do this. Koizumi has said that among the opposition parties gthere are those who say that they support my line and are willing to cooperate to a certain extent.h But if this is the case, it would be logical for Koizumi to break off ties with the gforces of resistance,h and rally the political forces opposed to them, rather than engaging in a feud within the LDP.

The actual outcome of Koizumifs approach will be the expansion of the gforces of resistance,h led by the Hashimoto faction, under the slogan of greform.h This is the irony of the election. If this election had been held under the Mori government, a large number of these LDP politicians would have been unable to even participate, and in this sense no one has rendered a greater service to the candidates with vested interests than Koizumi himself.

Koizumifs greformsh will also be unable to relieve the worsening economic difficulties. Even in the election campaign, it was openly declared that the economy would worsen and there would be a gSeptember crisis.h If the economic situation does worsen, there a loud chorus demanding economic stimulus will be heard within the LDP, and gpublic opinionh will quickly turn its back on Koizumifs gphilosophyh of genduring pain.h

But rather than such ineffectual gphilosophies,h real-life interests and displays of practical ability are more significant--and have always been so.

For instance, former Prime Minister Hashimoto was unable to respond to the gfinancial crisish in the wake of the bank collapses, and only talked about financial reconstruction, and was thus removed from office under the overwhelming criticism within the LDP from those voices demanding business stimulus. There is no guarantee that Koizumi will not meet the same fate.

This is similar to the situation when Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi (1870-1931) rose to power in 1929 on the wave of the chorus calling for gsubstantial reformh The great popularity he enjoyed when he took office disappeared in less than two years in the midst of the worsening recession. The voices of praise and expectation suddenly turned into complaints and curses.

There is little doubt that Koizumifs cabinet will sit on their hands as the recession worsens. However, since Koizumi has already attacked the gtraditionalh economic policies and called for gstructural reformh--saying that economic recovery is impossible without this--what other means does he have left?

Conversely, if Koizumi does in fact try to literally realize his slogan that geconomic recovery is impossible without structural reform,h while the economic situation not only remains dismal but in fact worsens, there is no guarantee against economic collapse and a panic.

The drawbacks of the new election system were also exposed in the recent election. In particular, this revealed that the new reform in the proportional election that allowed voters to write down either an individual candidatefs name or the name of the political party on the ballot is a terrible system that only serves the interests of the vested interests within the LDP.

If there were a system of voting only for candidates names (old system) most of these politicians would have been defeated. Under such a system, the amount of votes the gvested interesth politicians received in the election wouldnft have been nearly enough for them to be elected. For example, even the LDP candidate--representing the postal department--who received the most votes only received about half of the one million votes that would have been needed to be elected. Even more pathetic was the performance of some gconservativeh candidates affiliated with gbusinessh circles (some of them only received twenty or thirty thousand votes).

This new election system is also to blame for the large number of celebrities that participated in the recent election. These people are completely incompetent in terms of politics, and also know nothing about education (a professional wrestler said that he would gcontribute to the problem of educationh if elected, but his only educational idea or policy is the C-student idea of enforcing discipline and gmoral educationh).

In short, the election system has not been improved, but rather degenerated to better serve the interests of gvested interestsh within the LDP.

On this point the JCP was particularly gzealous,h but the SDP also defended the same position as the conservatives in the name of gcitizen movementsh for the environment and health care. In reality, there was little difference between this party and the gconservative wingh of the LDP.

The SDP and JCP were seen as more in support of the status quo than the greformists,h and this is natural.

For instance, the JCP argued that the greformh of eliminating bad debt should not be done, since this would lead to the collapse of small and medium size businesses. However, the bad credit of the banks is mainly directed towards general contractors, so to oppose the reorganization of bad debt amounts to a struggle for their interests--by saying that saving the contractors will save small and medium size businesses. This comes down to the idea that the interests of large companies is also the interests of smaller businesses, and that these are somehow in agreement.

This recent election also clarified the definitive collapse of the JCPfs tactic of supporting candidates not affiliated to any political party. These non-party candidates who the JCP had counted on, in fact overwhelmingly sided with the LDP, and this exposed the impotence and sterility of the JCP strategy.

They tremble because they worry that Koizumi will not be able to carry out his promised greforms,h and fear the consequences. Everyone knows that it is easy to speak of greforms,h but difficult to actually carry them out. Koizumi dared to openly and clearly raise this as a gnational task.h As a result, no political party will now be able to easily shirk this responsibility.

Koizumifs LDP firmly promised gstructural reform,h and on the basis of this promise they were able to scrape together support from the people. But Koizumi does not have the true desire, outlook, or means to achieve this. The promise for gstructural reformh has been made, but now the LDP is filled with dread at the prospect that the emptiness of this promise will be plainly revealed.

Even if the LDP were to firmly push through gstructural reformh this would only result in their own dissolution since such reforms would remove the very basis of the party by unearthing the privileges and rights that only exist on the basis of the huge infusion of state money.

On the other hand, if these reforms are sabotaged and cannot be implemented, and the old system that is dissolving staggers on, Koizumi will have broken his promise, and may be quickly voted out of office.

There is little hope for Koizumi no matter which path he takes. The slogan of greformh has been raised, but ultimately this remains an empty phrase. If there is any significance to Koizumifs government, it is merely that the government has loudly presented this slogan of greform.h In the sense of merely raising a slogan, Koizumi is nothing more than a quixotic figure.

If the collapse of companies continues, the number of unemployed increases by thousands, and the gpainh Koizumi speaks of deepens, it will probably become impossible to continue the line of gstructural reform.h Koizumi talks about genduring pain,h but if this pain continues for two or three years (and Koizumi has nonchalantly told people gto be patient for two or three yearsh), it becomes totally different story.

Of course, the working class firmly supports gstructural reformh--indeed in its most thorough form. But this refers to the fundamental gstructural reformh in which the rule of capital is swept away, and the liberation of the workers is achieved.

There is no way for such profound reform to be carried out under the LDP, or under the rule of capital in general. Koizumifs gstructural reformh will ultimately face this dilemma. Through Koizumifs victory, the time has arrived when this truth will become clear.