Japanese politics

Taro's last card

Japan's beleaguered prime minister calls an election

SINCE becoming Japan’s prime minister last September, Taro Aso has resisted calls to hold an early election. But the clamour from both his own team, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), as well as the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), became too loud to ignore. The LDP suffered a striking defeat in municipal elections in Tokyo on Sunday July 12th and, facing an open revolt from his own party, Mr Aso finally succumbed.

On Monday Mr Aso decided to call an election on August 30th to select members of the lower house of Japan’s Diet (parliament), which he plans to dissolve next week. The decision should quell moves from within the LDP to boot him out. But the decision could result in the ousting of the LDP; the party has governed Japan for more than 50 years.

The LDP’s monopoly over political power has created the same problems as monopolies in business: inefficient results, a dearth of new ideas and complacent leaders. Yet the mood in Japan is changing. After enduring almost two decades of an economy stuck in the doldrums, the Japanese public has begun to express displeasure at the ballot box.

In five local elections in recent weeks, including Sunday’s for the Tokyo Assembly, the DPJ has trounced the LDP. Most tellingly, the defeats have come alongside a surge in voter turnout. The election in Tokyo saw a 55% turnout—a hefty ten percentage points more than four years ago. The increase was even more marked in the race for the governorship of Shizuoka prefecture in early July.

This is bad news for Mr Aso and the LDP. The party’s popularity has been waning for years. The LDP lost power for an 11-month period in 1993-94 to a jumble of opposition groups, but they were so ineffectual that the LDP was easily able to step in again. In 2001 a former prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, was welcomed precisely because he sought to reform the political system.

But Mr Koizumi’s tenure today looks more like an aberration: the LDP has changed prime ministers annually since he stepped down in 2006. And when he resigned from politics earlier this year, Mr Koizumi immediately named his 28-year-old son as a successor to inherit his fundraising organisation to stand for his vacant Diet seat. The willingness to engage in “hereditary politics” reinforces the image of the LDP as being a cause of the ossified political system, not its solution.

In opinion polls, voters say that they would prefer a government run by the DPJ to the LDP by almost two to one. But around half of the country wants neither, underscoring the Japanese public’s deep frustration with the entire political class. The pressure on Mr Aso is especially great. His popularity rating has slipped from around 50% when he took office last September to under 20% today (and even slipping below 10% earlier this year). The Tokyo election forced Mr Aso's hand. The LDP lost its majority for the first time since the 1960s, while the DPJ became the majority party, winning 54 of the assembly’s 127 seats. The defeat shows the degree to which the LDP is losing its power as a political force.

Throughout his tenure, Mr Aso has cleverly used his power to dissolve the Diet to his advantage. It became a carrot to coax the DPJ into supporting the LDP’s legislation—before Mr Aso trumped up a new reason why an election must be held off for the public good. Now, in calling elections, the prime minister reveals not so much the LDP’s power but its growing impotence.