As the economy sinks, the prime minister is ready to go down with it
By H.T. | TOKYO
THE prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, appears suddenly to have settled a question that has hung over Japanese politics since the summer. He all but promised to dissolve the lower house of the Diet, or parliament, within two days—to hold a general election by December 16th.
The move was greeted with glee by Shinzo Abe, who believes he can lead the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) back to the position of power it occupied for nearly all of the 55 years to 2009. It raises another big question for Mr Noda, though. Why is he willing to hold an election, so soon, that polls suggest he is bound to lose?
The answer would seem to reveal a lot about the prime minister, a man who seems prepared to take his party down in flames in order to do what he considers to be the right thing. Many within the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have urged him to cling to power for as long as possible, hoping that Mr Abe, who fluffed the job of prime minister from 2006-07, will stumble again in the meantime.
Yet Mr Noda overrode their objections and set only two conditions for dissolving parliament. First, he wants the LDP-led opposition to join the DPJ in voting in the Diet to issue bonds that would cover the budget deficit—and so avoid Japan’s version of the “fiscal cliff”. The opposition has already agreed to that.
Secondly, he wants a commitment in the next parliament to reduce the number of MPs. Japan needs to redraw the electoral map after the election, in order to avoid a constitutional crisis related to voting disparities between heavily populated and depopulated areas. For Mr Abe, that appears a small price to pay for something the LDP craves: a return to power.
Standing opposite Mr Abe in a face-to-face debate in the Diet, Mr Noda sought to justify the election timing by declaring that he was honest. He had made a promise in August to the LDP that he would dissolve parliament “soon”, and he intended to stick to it. Those who know him say that he is also driven by a desire to make tough decisions about Japan’s future, however unpopular they appear to members of his party.
Earlier this year, he persuaded the DPJ and the LDP to join forces to raise the consumption tax (a tax on sales), starting in 2014, even though this went against his party’s 2009 election manifesto. The deficit-financing bill will apply until 2015, such that future governments will not be hijacked by the issue as the DPJ has been.
Some of his decisions confound those in Mr Noda’s own party, who have seen his government’s support rate plunge to 18%, according to the latest poll. They also fear holding an election during what may be the start of Japan’s third economic recession in five years. On November 12th it was reported that GDP in the third quarter declined 0.9% compared with the previous three months. Fourth-quarter data augur ill, too.
If that were not bad enough, many colleagues also fear that Mr Noda will campaign to take Japan into negotiations on a free-trade deal with America and ten other countries, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Though on November 13th a poll in the Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper, said 48% of those surveyed approved of the TPP, it is a highly controversial issue whose opponents shout much louder than its supporters. Mr Abe, whose party panders to Japan’s farm lobby, opposes it. “A party leader is just not supposed to push through unpopular policies before an election. It’s electoral suicide,” says Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Mr Noda may not be all lofty ideals. There may be a smidgen of political calculus there. A swift election would make it hard for Japan’s array of smaller “third” parties to band together and pose a serious challenge. And it would give Mr Abe more time to mess things up before an upper-house election due in June. Some speculate that Mr Noda may have a plan up his sleeve later to forge an alliance of pro-TPP types from both main parties.
In the meantime, though, Mr Noda appears to be on the verge of handing power on a plate back to an LDP that has barely reformed itself since it was driven out in disgrace three years ago. That, for all his good intentions, would be a legacy of failure.
Updated: This article was emended slightly at 12.45 GMT on November 14th, mainly to reflect the fact that Mr Noda has resolved to dissolve parliament on November 16th.
