Ozawa unconcerned

The campaign for the DPJ's 21 Sept. leadership election will begin in just over one month.

Not surprisingly, no candidate has stepped forward to challenge Ozawa Ichiro in his bid for a third time. Mr. Ozawa has announced that he will not be thinking about the party election until after next week's Obon holiday.

One by one, potential challengers have stepped forward only to back down in the face of overwhelming odds.

In late July, Okada Katsuya, the great, white hope of the anti-Ozawa groups, dropped hints that he was thinking strongly about a bid to return to the helm of the DPJ. He acted quickly, however, to snuff out any talk of his candidacy, declaring he had no great desire to run. Mr. Okada spells out his reasoning in a post at his blog, noting that while he doesn't want to run, he does want a discussion on the party's manifesto for the next general election, which he thinks must be more specific to strengthen the party's position in the general election campaign.

Edano Yukio, a member of the Maehara group, and Noda Yoshihiko, head of a small conservative DPJ faction close to the Maehara group, have stated their desire to oppose Mr. Ozawa in September, but neither man has made his candidacy offical. Both have said that they'll decide later this month; Asahi says that the Maehara group and its satellite prefer Mr. Okada or Mr. Noda to Mr. Edano or Sengoku Yoshito, who hinted at a run for the leadership earlier this summer.

Given that the campaign is shaping up to be the Maehara-Noda bloc versus the rest of the party, Mr. Ozawa can surely rest easy and act magnanimously towards his rivals.

Mr. Maehara's rebellion

On Monday, Suga Yoshihide, the deputy head of the LDP's election strategy committee, praised Maehara Seiji, deputy head of the DPJ for his comments about the DPJ's ability to govern and incoherent policy agenda in a speech in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. Mr. Suga said: "He spoke courageously. If someone like Maehara-san becomes leader, it will become a party that can be trusted and Japan will have a true two large-party system."

What better way to foment further turmoil by praising Mr. Maehara for his courage? I've noted previously that with the LDP in turmoil and the prime minister's popularity abysmal (but recovering slightly), the government and the LDP have pinned their hopes for a surprisingly strong showing in the next election on a divided DPJ that can be portrayed as incapable of governing.

If Mr. Maehara has any political sense, he would stop his rebellion now, unless, of course, he wants to give comfort to the LDP and deepen the impression that the DPJ is incapable of wielding power. The DPJ, it seems, is powerless to stop the wayward Mr. Maehara. The senior leadership appears willing to tolerate Mr. Maehara's public trashing of the party even as he serves as one of seven DPJ vice presidents. Indeed, it appears that there is little the party can do to discipline any dissenter, whether Mr. Maehara or the upper house members who voted against the party on road construction earlier this session. If Mr. Maehara is to be restrained, he will have to do it himself — or his peers, the DPJ's other wakate members, will have to lean on him.

Perhaps they can call attention to the behavior of his fellow young turk/former party leader, Okada Katsuya. Mr. Okada, who took the blow for the party in the 2005 election, is said to want to return to the leadership, but in contrast to Mr. Maehara, he has refrained from public criticism of Mr. Ozawa's leadership. A telling sign is the title of Mr. Okada's new (and first) book, Seiken Kotai (Regime Change). While he offers a "reform menu" for a DPJ government, including proposals for administrative reform, social security reform, fiscal reform, and regional decentralization, the title indicates that whatever his policy disagreements with the DPJ's current leadership, he remains committed to the party's goal of "regime change." He still believes that a DPJ-led government, whatever its flaws, would be better than a continuation of LDP rule (which, as we've learned this Diet session, means the continuation of zoku rule). It remains to be seen whether Mr. Maehara believes the same.

Indeed, Mainchi, in reporting on Mr. Okada's new book, contrasts Mr. Okada and Mr. Maehara, noting that Mr. Maehara desperately wants a complete debate on the party's policies and has indicated that he will stand in the September election if no one else does, while Mr. Okada remains committed to regime change first and has said nothing about running in September. I don't disagree with Mr. Maehara's belief that Mr. Ozawa should be reelected uncontested, but there are ways to do that without completely undermining the party.

Incidentally, continuing the discussion in this post, it bears mentioning that the clash between idealism and realism is not just within the party — it is within Mr. Ozawa himself, as I argued here. Mr. Ozawa's DPJ is politically schizophrenic in part because Mr. Ozawa is politically schizophrenic.

More trouble on the BOJ succession

In a meeting between Oshima Tadamori and Yamaoka Kenji, the Diet strategy chairmen of the LDP and DPJ respectively, the two parties came closer to an agreement on joint personnel decisions. They discussed a proposal that envisions an "expanded representatives committee" of twenty from both houses that will question government-nominated candidates about their policy positions in closed hearings, although the records of the hearing will be released once a successor candidate's term ends.

However, Mainichi reports that the question of the BOJ succession is becoming the subject of a growing struggle within the DPJ between pro-Ozawa and anti-Ozawa forces. At the same time that the DPJ leadership is struggling to reach an agreement with the LDP on how to vet nominees, Mr. Ozawa is fighting a rearguard battle within the DPJ. Edano Yukio, a former head of the party's policy bureau, and Sengoku Yoshito, the head of the party investigatory subcommittee handling joint appointments, are opposed to the nomination of Muto Toshiro due to fears for the independence of the BOJ from fiscal authorities. Mainichi suggests that this dispute is becoming the first major power struggle since Mr. Ozawa's aborted resignation last November.

Mr. Ozawa, not surprisingly, fired back, reminding Mr. Sengoku that his subcommittee's remit is limited to reporting to the party executive on the candidate under consideration. Slightly to my surprise, Kan Naoto and Hatoyama Yukio, Mr. Ozawa's fellow executives, closed ranks behind him, reminding the dissenters that the final decision is theirs.

Wrapped up in this issue is the question of the September leadership election. Mr. Ozawa is also facing pressure from Okada Katsuya, a potential successor to Mr. Ozawa, who has said that he feels "uncomfortable" with Mr. Muto's nomination for the same reasons as Messrs. Sengoku and Edano. Mainichi warns that should Mr. Okada link up with the other dissenters, "it could quite possibly influence the outcome of this September's party leadership election." For the moment, however, Mr. Okada hasn't completely nixed the Muto nomination, at least according to Fujii Hirohisa, a channel of communication between Mr. Okada and Mr. Ozawa. And Mr. Ozawa's reelection looks increasingly assured, as a series of party leaders have come out in support of Mr. Ozawa's remaining the head of the party.

With the party leadership united against letting Mr. Sengoku's subcommittee call the shots on the nomination, it is unlikely that the dissenters will get their way. The BOJ succession will proceed, but a bit less smoothly than the government and the markets would have hoped. I just wonder why Mr. Ozawa gave them an opening in the first place. And I wonder how Mr. Ozawa, not known for being charitable with those who dissent from his course of action, will deal with his rivals. (Or has control of the House of Councillors tied Mr. Ozawa's hands in dealing with intraparty rivals, as in the case of Ōe Yasuhiro and other dissenters on the special road construction fund?)

How long can Ozawa last?

The tide has definitively turned against Mr. Ozawa, the surest sign being that the media is carrying reports about allegations of fiscal malfeasance by his support groups, once again involving the use of campaign funds for real estate. And so Mr. Ozawa is the target of newspaper editorials demanding that he provided a detailed account of his activities. (Of course, as MTC notes, none of this may be of any consequence as malfeasance goes.)

At the same time, as argued by Jun Okumura, Mr. Fukuda continues to enjoy a honeymoon with the press, which has excused reports of mistakes in Mr. Fukuda's own political funds reports, among other things. I guess the frequency of stories about allegations of corruption serve as an indication of "who's hot, who's not" — and the prevailing circumstances could easily change. But for the moment, Mr. Fukuda winds in his sails, and Mr. Ozawa appears to be flailing wildly in search of a way to regain the momentum his party had until Mr. Abe resigned.

But if the blows against Mr. Ozawa's reputation continue, will he be able to recover his stature and continue to serve as leader of the DPJ, especially if I'm wrong and an election is in fact around the corner? There's nothing like ongoing allegations of corruption to remind voters of Mr. Ozawa's roots in the Tanaka-Takeshita faction, and Mr. Ozawa's latest shift on security policy may exacerbate tensions within the DPJ that had been temporarily dispelled by Mr. Ozawa's opposition to the extension of the anti-terror law. While Nagashima Akihisa and the DPJ's other hawks may be rather pleased with Mr. Ozawa's announcement of a plan to have JSDF forces participate in ISAF — Richard Katz and Peter Ennis, in a TOE alert, quote him as saying, "Japan must stand right in the center of Afghanistan, and shoulder-to-shoulder with forces from NATO and other countries in the efforts to bring stability to that country" — an article by Tsutsumi Gyou in Liberal Time suggests that Mr. Ozawa may have miscalculated with his latest step.

"Does Mr. Ozawa's plan to participate in ISAF rest upon sufficient debate within the party beforehand? If Mr. Ozawa acted on his own authority without satisfactory debate within the party, it is a problem for the DPJ as a political party. It will amount to a faction of Ozawa dictatorship."

Of course, Tsutsumi then goes too far and talks about how Hitler took advantage of pension politics to take power and concludes that Mr. Ozawa is "an alarming politician." (Chalk one up for Godwin's Law.) But the point about Mr. Ozawa's "dictatorial" control of the DPJ stands, and it is worth asking how long his rule will continue unopposed, how long the flailing at the top of the DPJ — ably discussed by Jun Okumura in a post that came through while I wrote this post — will last before there is a concerted push for a change.

Another article in Liberal Time suggests that Okada Katsuya, the man who was at the helm just in time to see his party washed away by Mr. Koizumi in September 2005, could be the man to succeed Mr. Ozawa.

"Inside the DPJ, the voices of those saying that 'It is not a good plan to seek a dissolution and general election in the current extraordinary session of the Diet' are gaining strength, and 'If Prime Minister Fukuda's approval ratings rise, the DPJ should choose Okada Katsuya as its candidate for prime minister to lead the party in the next general election.'"

Whether the new leader is Mr. Okada or someone else, the DPJ needs to reconsider the Diet strategy pushed by Mr. Ozawa that has effectively squandered whatever the party gained from its July victory.

It is increasingly difficult to see Mr. Ozawa as the man to bring about a change of ruling party.