Facing Party Rift, Japan’s Premier Calls Election

Facing Party Rift, Japan’s Premier Calls Election
By MARTIN FACKLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: July 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/world/asia/14japan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


TOKYO — Prime Minister Taro Aso faced a revolt in his own party on Monday, after a bruising defeat in a widely watched local vote forced him to call for a general election in which his Liberal Democratic Party could lose its 50-year grip on power.

Mr. Aso had been trying to put off the national elections, now set for August 30, in part because opinion polls have shown that his Liberal Democrats face almost certain defeat. Mr. Aso’s hand appeared to be forced, though, by a poor showing on Sunday in a municipal election in Tokyo.

With both Mr. Aso and the L.D.P. sinking into the teens in opinion polls, political experts are saying that Mr. Aso may face the wrath of his own party members, who fear the party may break apart if it finds itself in the unaccustomed position of losing power.

A poll conducted last week for Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, showed that 37 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the opposition Democrats in national elections, compared with 22 percent for the Liberal Democrats. A poll last week by another newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, put Mr. Aso’s approval rating at 19.7 percent, which is low even by Japanese standards.

In recent weeks, there has been a growing chorus of lawmakers calling for Mr. Aso to step down so the party could go into the elections with a new, and they hope more popular leader. Experts expect that chorus to swell in the coming weeks.

“We can’t just engage in group suicide,” Hidenao Nakagawa, a former party secretary general, told a party meeting two weeks ago.

The Liberal Democrats have governed Japan for most of its postwar history, but recently the party has appeared unable to adapt to a changing era. Disgruntled voters increasingly blame the party for its failure to outgrow its traditional pork-barrel politics and find an end to the nation’s seemingly intractable political paralysis and economic decline.

“The Tokyo assembly vote pushed Prime Minister Aso into a position where he either had to dissolve the Parliament or resign,” said Ichita Yamamoto, a Liberal Democratic lawmaker. “The feeling inside the party is that he couldn’t put off the decision any longer.”

Emboldened by the vote on Sunday in Tokyo, the Democratic Party and its allies, which won control of Parliament’s upper house two years ago, submitted a no-confidence motion on Monday against Mr. Aso and his cabinet. Opinion polls show the Democrats now have a commanding lead in public support, though they suffer problems of their own, including lack of policy clarity and a financing scandal involving the party’s leader, a Stanford-trained engineer, Yukio Hatoyama.

On Monday, Mr. Aso tried to play down any connection between the vote on Sunday and his party’s national political fortunes, although he apologized for the poor showing. The setback was the latest in a string of regional electoral defeats this year by the once dominant Liberal Democrats.

Many political analysts said they were baffled by Mr. Aso’s decision to call an election that his party seems certain to lose. The prime minister said on Monday that it was time for the public to make a choice.

“It’s time to seek the public’s mandate,” he said. “The issue here is which party can really protect the people’s lives and the country.”

Some analysts said the decision showed that the Liberal Democrats seem resigned to defeat — and that they are willing to wait on the sidelines for the inexperienced Democrats to implode and give them a chance to return to power. Others likened the decision to a political “banzai charge.”

“This is a sign that even Liberal Democratic lawmakers themselves are giving up on the old style of L.D.P. politics,” said Harumi Arima, an independent political commentator, using the party’s initials. “Sacrificing themselves is the only way for Japan to break out of its political logjam.”

Mr. Aso and others have so far fended off calls for his removal, saying the party cannot afford to alienate voters with another change of leadership. When he took office last September, Mr. Aso was the fourth prime minister in two years, a rapid turnover that only reinforced the popular perception that the Liberal Democrats had lost their way.

Since he became prime minister, the question of when he would call the election has loomed over Mr. Aso’s government. By law, he must call the election by Sept. 10. But Mr. Aso said he wanted to wait to give economic stimulus measures passed earlier this year time to take effect, and possibly revive his party’s flagging popularity.

Mark McDonald contributed from Hong Kong.