I know what you are; we’re just haggling over the price
Posted by ampontan on Saturday, June 20, 2009
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
- Ronald Reagan
AND TO THINK that some people considered the late American president to be an amiable dunce! To prove his point, let’s read the lips of some of the practitioners of Japanese politics. First, however, we’ll start with a forecast from an unidentified bureaucrat.
The civil servant was speaking to freelance journalist Yokota Yumiko for an article she wrote in the June 2008 issue of Shokun! magazine. His prediction involved the relationship of the Kasumigaseki bureaucrats and the politicians in a possible government led by the current opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan. He said:
“No matter how you look at it, no policy proposals can be implemented without Kasumigaseki. Even if the Democratic Party of Japan were to form a government, it would be unlikely to have an adverse impact on our work. Indeed, it would make our work a lot easier if the DPJ did us the favor of winning the next lower house election and breaking the logjam in the Diet. It would be easier to pass bills, and we would be able to free ourselves from the chains that tie us to the engorged LDP politicians.
“If the DPJ were to form a government, they would wind up having to restrain their current irresponsibility. Having them take power once should be enough for the voters to realize they have no ability to handle the reins of government.”
Now for the political lips. Here’s Aso Taro of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party just after he was selected prime minister last year:
“I’m a politician that can skillfully utilize the bureaucratic organization…There is a distinction between what one should entrust to government officials without recklessly opposing everything they do, and what politicians should do….The bureaucracy is something to be managed.”
On 9 February this year, then secretary-general and now party president of the DPJ, Hatoyama Yukio, said during a speech:
“We will have everyone with the rank of bureau chief or higher in every ministry and agency submit their resignation, and then confirm whether or not they will implement the policies that the DPJ has in mind.”
It certainly sounds like he’s serious about reforming the bureaucracy, doesn’t it? It also sounds suspiciously like a loyalty test for government employees, but let’s read some more lips.
Here’s Acting DPJ President Kan Naoto answering a question at a press conference just this week:
Q: Will you seek the resignation of all personnel with the rank of bureau chief or higher (if you form a government)?
A: “It would be next to impossible to automatically force those resignations. Separating oneself from the bureaucracy does not at all mean being opposed to the bureaucracy or eliminating the bureaucracy. We want to utilize the bureaucracy’s experience and knowledge for crafting legislation. We want people to understand that the roles of politicians and bureaucrats are different, and to create a cooperative relationship in a new business model.”
By jingo, he sure sounds a lot like Aso Taro, doesn’t he? But Mr. Aso is the one people think Kasumigaseki has under its thumb!
It also sounds as if that unidentified bureaucrat was on to something.
And if you compare the statements of Messrs. Hatoyama and Kan, one has to wonder if all DPJ promises are delivered with a pre-existing expiration date.
At least this one expired before the election.
Up next is Nakagawa Hidenao, the de facto leader of the reform wing of the LDP. Mr. Nakagawa and a group of allies have drawn up a bill for consideration in the Diet that completely prohibits amakudari (the practice of giving senior bureaucrats important jobs in government-affiliated organizations and private companies when they retire) and watari (the name for the ministries’ arrangement of successive jobs for retired bureaucrats at government-affiliated corporations, with the former civil servants receiving a pension each time).
It also has a provision for reducing the rank and salary of senior bureaucratic executives, presumably for substandard job performance.
Mr. Nakagawa has collected 125 signatures in support of the bill from LDP MPs: 111 in the lower house, and 14 in the upper house.
Any Diet member can submit a bill for consideration; it requires 20 signatures for the lower house and 10 for the upper house, and Mr. Nakagawa obviously has them.
When bills are submitted, however, the speaker usually refers them to a committee. In this case, Mr. Nakagawa submitted his proposed legislation to the LDP’s Diet Affairs Committee and an LDP organization first. The committee chair said the legislation would be discussed in conjunction with the government’s civil service reform legislation.
Both Mr. Nakagawa and the DPJ have said the government’s legislation lacks muscle. He designed the bill specifically to gain the support of the opposition, giving it the potential to become a true bipartisan reform measure.
What has the DPJ said in public about the bill put together by Mr. Nakagawa?
…………
Their lips haven’t moved yet.
If the opposition wanted to put pressure on the government, establish their reputation as serious reformers, and actually achieve real reform much needed by the government and much desired by the people, wouldn’t they have been all over this already?
Could it be they’re waiting for Ozawa “The Puppeteer” Ichiro, the party’s Shadow Shogun, to tell them what to think first? Or could it be they weren’t all that serious to begin with?
It looks like we’re about to find out which members of the world’s second-oldest profession in the Diet are really part of the first-oldest.
Jake Was Here said
And yet Japan seems to have a fascination with our president. I think the only way he could be explained to them is by comparing them to some of their better-known political disasters — men and women who reached high positions on the basis of charisma, but turned out to be disappointments or worse. (How many of them actually make a perfect fit that pattern?)
ampontan said
The fascinated Japanese are probably no different from the declining number of spellbound Americans or anyone else. They are/were interested in what he is rather than what he’s done.
Understandable, considering that he is both a powerful symbol, and that before he was elected, he hadn’t really done anything other than waste a truckload of Annenberg grant money and (perhaps) put together an overwritten book that turns out to have been fiction in some places (the gap between the reality of his employment at a New York company writing an investment newsletter and the circumstances at the company, compared to his description of it, to cite one example).
bender said
The idea that kasumigaseki rules Japan is a myth. You have to look more closely, and you should see that the situation is more sophisticated than the one often stated as “bureaucracy rule”. Take for example the incident concerning the recently arrested Health Ministry bureau chief. It’s pretty obvious that there was a politician behind the petty crime, although his/her name is never revealed. In fact, even the newspapers are reporting that bureaucrats never make deputy secretary chief, which is the top bureaucratic position in the ministries, without political backup. I have all reason to believe this must be true. The idea that political control of the bureaucratic system is the solution to all the woes is, unfortunately, too naive. The reality is that the system is in fact under political control, and it’s the unity of the administrative and legislative powers in Japan rather than the separation between the two that may be the problem.