By Matthew Chozick
With a general election looming, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso's resolve to stay in power is clear and consistent: he will not relinquish leadership of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) no matter what the cost to his own caucus may be.
Internal rows within the LDP have failed to unseat the premier, which means that on Tuesday afternoon Aso can proceed as planned to dissolve the Lower House. The prime minister has told reporters, "I have to stand at the forefront and fight to the end, even with my teeth clenched."
Former LDP Secretary-General Hidenao Nakagawa led the movement to oust Aso. Nakagawa claimed to have collected the required 128 house member signatures, but several key legislators refused to verify their own signatures, suggesting that they did not actually sign the petition or that the content was different from what they thought it had been.
If the signatures had been verified, a joint plenary meeting of both houses would take place, likely resulting in the selection of a new party president.
The Cabinet will convene at 8 a.m. on Tuesday to decide upon the dissolution of the House of Representatives.
LDP Secretary General Hiroyuki Hosoda announced that the lower house will also meet on July 21, before its dissolution, to discuss the Aug. 30 general election.
August general elections are rare in Japan and many legislators are pushing for more time to rally for support. But could a few more weeks or months help the LDP regain clout? In a Mainichi Shimbun survey released on Monday, 56 percent of respondents said they want the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to win the next House of Representatives election, compared with 23 percent of the respondents choosing LDP.
If Aso were to follow requests to step down now, he would become the fourth premier to do so in the past three years.
Despite the rapid turnover of LDP prime ministers, Aso and others criticize the DJP for inexperience in leading the country and claim it is therefore poorly qualified to handle the economic crisis.
The Japanese GDP, according to figures from Japan's Cabinet Office, declined by an annual pace of 15.2 percent in the first quarter of 2009.
The LDP's struggle to deal with Japan's economic nosedive is only the second interruption in its dominance of Japanese politics since its founding in 1955. Aso is a leader of one of the parties with the longest control of a democratic nation in the world, but the current crisis may prove to be a good chance for the DPJ to overcome the LDP's history.
General election campaigns are set to officially begin on Aug. 18 and continue until the election on Aug. 30. Aso will be fighting an uphill battle to win over his colleagues even in the LDP, as many blame the prime minister for their defeat last Sunday in the Tokyo Municipal Assembly election. The LDP lost 10 seats in the election and the DPJ gained 20, putting the two parties at 38 and 54, respectively.
Bucky Sheftall, professor of culture and communication studies at Shizuoka University, told Xinhua, "it seems average Japanese voters -- irregardless of the likelihood that they are even more disgusted with Nagatacho 'business as usual' than I am -- always lose their nerve at the last minute and cast the same old LDP vote. "
Nakagawa and others have castigated Aso for stifling discussion. According to Kyodo, Nakagawa said, "We won't be able to rebuild the party if we don't hold a free discussion, lay out firm policies and desperately appeal to the public about how we are going to stop the Democratic Party of Japan from taking control, to vow to regenerate the party, and to express our plans for Japan in the course of the next four years."
Nakagawa's criticism hits upon a key issue, that change appears to be right around the corner, but what kind of change will it be? So far, inner-party differences and warring factions make any clear vision difficult to articulate. Members within the parties are splintering into coalitions at odds with one another.
The only matter that seems certain is that Prime Minister Aso will hold on as long as he has legal legitimacy to do so.
(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2009)
