Asia | Japan's snap election result

Romping home

Shinzo Abe wins easily, but with a weak mandate from voters

|TOKYO

DOUBTS have persisted about Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, who reversed a humiliatingly dreadful first term in office in 2006-07 with a stunning return to power in 2012a comeback often credited to the backing of abler and tougher political allies together with an unusual run of good luck. Yet Mr Abe’s gamble to dissolve the lower house of the Diet in November was his alone, opposed by many in his party. It has paid off handsomely, and he may now become one of Japan’s longest-serving post-war prime ministers.

Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won 291 seats, or nearly all of the 294 seats it seized in its landslide win two years ago. Thanks to the LDP’s coalition partner, Komeito, which gained four seats to take 35 in total, the ruling coalition kept its two-thirds super majority in the 475-seat house. The coalition thus retains its power to pass laws without the upper house of parliament. When set against a recent pattern in Japanese politics of sudden swings against the government in power, the result, albeit on a low turnout, is a vote for continuity.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the biggest opposition party, made little headway despite falling approval ratings for the government. In October it made hay from a series of financial scandals in Mr Abe’s cabinet. The LDP’s revenge was to catch it unprepared for a snap poll. The DPJ increased its haul of seats from 62 to 73 (it had added five defectors from other parties after winning 57 seats in December 2012) but fell well short of the 100 or so that could have allowed it credibly to aim at a majority in the next lower house election, due by 2018 (in order slightly to reduce voting inequalities between rural and urban districts, the number of seats in the house was cut by five from 480 for the election on December 14th). In 110 single member districts, the DPJ failed even to muster candidates to run against the LDP.

The LDP also managed to eject from parliament the DPJ’s leader, Banri Kaieda. It was a symbolic ousting; not since 1949 has the leader of the main opposition party been unseated. Yet given Mr Kaieda’s lacklustre leadership, the loss may aid the DPJ. Naoto Kan, prime minister for the party during the 2011 catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, clung to his seat only by means of the proportional-representation share of the vote. He had campaigned chiefly on the subject of renewable energy, which proved of little interest to voters. In seizing upon the party’s disarray, Mr Abe has emerged as a craftier and more ruthless politician than many had credited, and the LDP’s post-war dominance of politics looks set to resume.

The LDP did not succeed in winning a two-thirds super-majority in the lower house by itself, as some Japanese media had predicted it would. It must still heed the views of the Buddhist-backed Komeito, which tends to act as a brake on its policies. Though Mr Abe has cemented his base and extended his term, the election result makes little difference to his ability to get things done. His claim to a renewed mandate for his economic programme, known as Abenomics, was undermined by the fact that 49m voters stayed away from the polls. Only an estimated 52.7% of those eligible to vote did so, a sizeable plunge from the corresponding figure of 59.3% in 2012, already the lowest in post-war history.

A recurring theme of the campaign was the failure of Abenomics to spread benefits to the less well-off outside Tokyo. More than two-thirds of the public disapproved of holding the snap election at all given the pressing need to address the economy. On the eve of the poll, Shigekuni Hayamizu, a shopkeeper from the centre of Osaka, the third-largest city, summed up the public’s mood on the snap election. “It can’t be helped”, he said. Mayu Adachi, a woman in her twenties, said she was determined not to vote at all. And a part-time chef, Komei Chikamori, complained that Abenomics risked widening a gap between rich and poor. “We are aware that many people have not yet felt the benefits [of Abenomics] and it is our mandate to deliver them,” said Mr Abe, as polling stations closed.

Aside from the balance between the two biggest parties, the election delivered a blow to Japan’s right wing and boosted the left. The right-leaning Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party) went from 42 to 41 seats, having already lost seats when several of its lawmakers split away this year to form the hard-right Party for Future Generations. Voters almost wiped out the latter, led by the 82-year old Shintaro Ishihara, which held on to just two seats. Meanwhile, the Japanese Communist Party more than doubled its presence in the Diet to 21 seats, and can now submit legislation for the first time.

The legislative calendar will soon recommence. In a sign of buoyant post-election confidence, Mr Abe announced that he would keep the line-up of his current cabinet, to be formally appointed during a special session of the Diet starting on December 24th. Several ministers have faced questions from the opposition over their use of political funds, including the defence and agriculture ministers, and the DPJ may return to the attack.

Soon afterwards, the government will need to complete the budget for the fiscal year 2015-16, in addition to a supplementary budget to boost a still-weak economy. The LDP plans to pass measures fulfilling Mr Abe’s recent decision to postpone a second rise in the consumption (value-added) tax. Other unpopular tasks loom, such as implementing the cabinet’s reinterpretation of Japan’s constitution in order to allow the Self-Defence Force to come to the aid of allies should they come under attack.

The question is whether alongside all of these tasks Mr Abe can use his renewed political capital to drive through structural changes to Japan’s economy, such as loosening the rigid labour market, and taking on the country’s vast and monopolistic network of agricultural co-operatives. Dispiritingly for pro-reformers in his government, he made little mention of such priorities during the campaign. Yet his third resounding electoral victory in two years means he has no excuse not to press ahead.

Photo credit: AFP

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