Is Masuzoe the Future of the LDP?

Written By: guyjin on March 2, 2010 No Comment

Masuzoe Yoichi spoke at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan yesterday, where he again highlighted the LDP’s need for reform. With the DPJ government’s approval ratings falling with every passing month, the LDP should theoretically be well placed to perform well at the Upper House elections scheduled for later this year. But they have so far failed to capitalize on any of the openings that the Hatoyama government has gifted them.

With the top two DPJ heavyweights (Hatoyama and Ozawa) under pressure over funding scandals, Tanigaki, the LDP leader, has tended to focus on trying to oust them through political pressure and scandal, rather than attempting to develop policies and arguments to win back power. The Tanigaki leadership has been as listless in many ways as the Hatoyama style of leadership, with the added problem of coming across as a spoiled child. Indeed last week, the LDP leader pulled a play out of the old DPJ playbook, by refusing to take part in Lower House budget committee sessions, until the DPJ call on Ozawa and others to be questioned over the funding scandal. The bluff was called, however, and the DPJ have had to slink back without achieving anything. While I am all for slowing down the work of government at times, the Tanigaki ploy was all but useless, and it made the LDP look like the powerless, minority DPJ of the Koizumi years, rather than a genuine governing force.

Masuzoe is one of the most popular members of the LDP, and is viewed by many as a likely future Prime Minister. As Health Minister, he was outspoken against bureaucratic waste, and is also a common presence on television where his no-nonsense views have made him a popular public figure. While he may be the face of the next itteration of the LDP, it is equally possible that he could break away to form a new party.

Ampontan had a great article last week about some of the jockeying for position that is going on in the LDP and DPJ, which is worth reading in full. He notes that the LDP and DPJ are both basically coalitions of convenience. I have argued here before that one of the ways in which Japanese politics differs from that of, say, the United States or Australia is that the political choices are somewhat less defined. Both of the major parties are mixes of both typical left and right ideas, and left and right leaning politicians. While it is true that the DPJ is more left leaning, and the LDP more right leaning, this doesn’t always result in major policy or idealogical differences between the two parties.

Regardless of the idealogical stances, neither party seems to be doing a very good job of capturing the sentiment of the country, and turning that into real policy. Masuzoe seems to sense an opening there, and has widely criticised the LDP for not reforming itself and becoming more relevant. He has recently convened a study group with other LDP members, where the focus has been on a return to more conservative, Koizumi era fiscal policy measures. One of the core principles of the group, as quoted by Ampontan, is that “economic growth is the basis for enhancing social welfare and minimizing income differentials”. This is a view that I can agree with whole-heartedly,

There has been a view among some that the LDP under Koizumi had been too ambitious in their economic goals, and that the policies of the Koizumi era led to the situation that Japan is in now, of a stunted economy. The truth is, however, that the seeds of this economy were sewn long before Koizumi ever took power, and indeed Japan has never truly recovered from the ‘lost decade’ of the 90s. And while Koizumi may have succeeded to some extent in his plan to ‘destroy the LDP’ system, to the extent that it was eventually pushed out of power, he was unsuccessful in breaking up the bureaucratic power structures, and thus unable to implement the majority of his policies to the extent necessary.

Following the election last year, where the DPJ swept to power, I noted that:

The best chance that the LDP has now, in my opinion, is to reconnect with people by becoming the party of fiscal responsibility… The greatest chance for the LDP to regain power within the next cycle or two is if the DPJ over-reach and spend too much… The LDP would do well to learn their lessons of the past, and position themselves as a truly fiscally conservative party (something they haven’t been for a long time).

Masuzoe may be the embodiment of this. He has hinted that if such a course becomes impossible within the LDP, he will not be averse to moving off and creating his own party. There are even suggestions that DPJ members such as Maehara Seiji (a conservative who has major disagreements with party big wig Ozawa) could be courted into such a party, creating another major reshuffling of political power. Whether such a party could gain enough strength to gain power in its own right, however, is an open question. Masuzoe is far more likely to be successful, at least in the short term, if he can bring pressure to bear on ousting Tanigaki. The question remains, however, as to whether any new incarnartion of the LDP will be any easier to reform and streamline than the old one, which fought tooth and nail against many of Koizumi’s reform plans.