Shining a light on New Komeito

THE MOST POPULAR parlor game for Japanese politicos over the past few months has been trying to guess when the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito will dissolve the lower house of the Diet and call for new elections.

They’d really rather not have to do it at all, because they’re assured of losing the supermajority they gained during the Great Koizumi Triumph of 2005. That overwhelming numerical advantage has enabled them to pass legislation they deem essential after the opposition Democratic Party of Japan captured the upper house in 2007. The DPJ can now block the immediate passage of bills it does not care for, though the lower house can approve them with a two-thirds majority.

But the Constitution says an election must come no later than September 2009, and that’s when all hell could break loose. A weakened coalition could stay in power; there could be a stalemate with no single dominant party, resulting in a scramble to form a new coalition; or the opposition could finally take control of the government.

That’s why the LDP has been trying to postpone the day of reckoning as long as possible. Some thought that the recent election of Aso Taro as prime minister signaled a fall ballot, which Mr. Aso himself admitted in the Diet this week. But the combination of the global economic downturn and the prime minister’s mudboat-sinking loose lips forced the shelving of election plans for the time being. Now it is assumed that an election will come sometime next spring.

The delay is causing the lesser coalition partner New Komeito to sweat, because they want balloting to be held as soon as possible. Newspaper accounts–and there are many–will blandly say it’s because the party wants the time to prepare for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections that will be held next July. But the newspapers never explicitly say why New Komeito is so desperate for a quick general election.

This week, however, the Sankei Shimbun came as close as it is possible to come to revealing the reason without actually saying it. Why all the secrecy? It’s because the political system would be rocked by the warfare that would erupt between Sankei and New Komeito if what is commonly assumed to be the facts of the matter were printed.

Sankei (which does not publish an English edition) led up to it with a few comments from New Komeito officials to establish their concern about the timing of elections.

Many now think the election will be pushed back to April. One New Komeito official lamented:

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. It would have been better to dissolve the Diet quickly.”

Ota Akihiro, New Komeito’s chief representative, spoke on the 25th to party supporters in Matsue:

“By standing, then sitting, and then half-sitting/half-standing over the question of when to hold a lower house election, we’ve caused a lot of trouble for all of you. We focused on an October Diet dissolution and a November election, but now I don’t know when it’s going to happen. For that I must apologize to you.”

One problem with the delay is that it creates extra expenses. Said Mr. Ota:

“What will we do about the campaign offices? We’re going to have to extend the leases soon. I want to close them, but we can’t.”

Meanwhile, Kitagawa Kazuo, the former Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, and current party secretary-general, publicly defended Mr. Aso by saying that he disagreed with the suggestion that the prime minister has had to backtrack from his recent statements.

Referring to the criticism of the prime minister within the coaltion, Mr. Kitagawa added:

“Just what do people think they’re doing by not supporting a prime minister and a party president they elected?”

He also insisted the party has not changed its position of contesting the next election under Mr. Aso’s leadership.

Party members are also concerned that pressing the prime minister to openly set a date for dissolution will turn him into a lame duck until the election is held. That’s one reason they continue to defend him in public while keeping their dissatisfaction private.

Some mid-tier and younger members of the LDP aren’t as patient. They’re urging the prime minister to submit a second supplementary budget before the end of this Diet session in late December (instead of waiting until the New Year, which Mr. Aso has said he will do). Observes another unidentified New Komeito executive:

“What can you do when the people inside are throwing gasoline on a burning house?”

For public consumption, the party’s executives still say that the Diet may be dissolved just after it is formally convened in mid-January. But they are worried that a delay in the election until the spring would overlap the period for the Tokyo Metropolitan District council elections in July.

Now we’re starting to cut close to the bone. Remember that it is generally assumed that New Komeito is the political arm of the lay Buddhist group, Soka Gakkai. The Sankei then quoted an unnamed Soka Gakkai official as saying:

“If there is an overlap with the lower house election, we will be unable to concentrate our resources on the council elections.”

Does he mean they would have trouble keeping campaign workers on the payroll to move from one election to the other? Would it be that difficult to keep the Tokyo campaign offices open for both elections?

No, he’s talking about something else.

The period of residency required for voting in an election in Japan is three months. It is also generally assumed by many in Japan—in fact, some consider it an open secret—that a standard election tactic for New Komeito and their Soka Gakkai supporters is to transfer their registered legal residency from other parts of the country and concentrate them in an area holding local elections, in this case the Tokyo Metropolitan District. The idea, of course, is to inflate their candidates’ vote totals. After the election, their residency registration will be transferred back to their former addresses.

The Tokyo election is scheduled for July, and the lower house election must be held by September. That’s not enough time to satisfy the legal requirements when switching back and forth. Therefore, the latest that a nationwide lower house election can be held and still give New Komeito supporters time to change their addresses is April.

Lest anyone think that only the bad old LDP is complicit in the New Komeito stratagem, it was also widely assumed that the former Socialists, now the Social Democrats, pulled the same stunt.

In fact, it’s probably safe to assume that none of the political parties comes within hailing distance of an honest election. Everybody is aware of all the tricks, but no one says anything about it. It’s a sort of Japanese electoral version of MAD, which stands for mutually assured destruction. MAD was the old military strategy of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The two countries maintained the peace by ensuring that a nuclear attack by one country would result in a full nuclear retaliation from the other. Since that would mean the destruction of both countries, neither initiated a potentially horrific conflict.

Apply that to Japanese political parties, and you might have a fair description of the situation in regard to extra-legal activities at both the party and the individual level.

On the one hand, it successfully maintains the status quo and keeps the body count to a minimum. On the other hand, it creates a negative stasis that is detrimental to political progress in the long run.

The Sankei might not want to (or might not be able to) come out and say it, but they certainly are poking at the edges of the envelope.