Birds of a feather

A SCANT SIX YEARS AGO, the name of Suzuki Muneo became synonymous in Japan for lying scum. He created a mini-fiefdom both in his district and within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, but then spent 437 days in jail after being found guilty of influence peddling in connection with the awarding of local lumber contracts. That straight-up time behind bars is a record for a Diet member. He was famously called “a trading company for scandal” to his face during questioning on the Diet floor.

It is likely there was even more squalor under the surface. Some of his aides were arrested for bid-rigging in relation to housing and power plant construction projects.

Alas, that did not end his political career. Japanese voters have a tendency to return disgraced politicians to office, perhaps because they think an intimate knowledge of the levers of power will facilitate slabs of political pork being shipped their way. After his release from jail, Mr. Suzuki formed a vanity political party and was reelected to the Diet as a proportional representative.

They say politics makes for strange bedfellows, and it is worthy of note with whom Mr. Suzuki has lately been getting under the sheets. Two weeks ago, the lower house parliamentary group for the People’s New Party, an aggregation of anti-reform paleo pols kicked out of the LDP by Prime Minister Koizumi, formally applied to have Mr. Suzuki’s party admitted to their membership. The Hokkaido ex-con will still keep his party, but he is now officially associated with the PNP in the Diet.

At about the same time, the PNP engaged in talks with the primary opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, to discuss a merger. The discussions broke down, not because of any political differences, but because they couldn’t find a way to allow one of the PNP members to keep his Diet seat after the merger. They’re still allies, albeit under separate banners.

Ozawa Ichiro’s DPJ claims to be the champions of reform for Japanese politics. Yet they won an upper house election in part by employing the old LDP policies of promising to buy off small farmers with subsidies. They have a working alliance with some of the most prominent anti-reform politicians that the LDP coughed up like a hairball. And now, as a result of that alliance, they’re going to work hand in glove with another ex-LDP member, who also happens to be Japan’s most notorious political jailbird.

Perhaps they’re conducting a study to determine if the ends actually do justify the means.

But really, one has to wonder:

Is this the change the Japanese people have been waiting for?