Fukuda warns his own party

By David Pilling in Tokyo

Published: September 26 2007 10:12 | Last updated: September 26 2007 16:37

Fortune has been smiling on the Democratic party of Japan. Within a few months the main opposition party has scored the biggest electoral victory in its history, seized control of the less power­ful upper house of parliament and knocked Shinzo Abe off his prime-ministerial perch.

Yasuo Fukuda, the Liberal Democratic party leader who took over as premier this week, said of his own party: “We have our backs against the wall. If this cabinet fails, the LDP will be extinguished.”

But scaring the LDP, which has hogged power for half a century, and driving it into opposition are two very different matters. How does the DPJ convert its current momentum into a full-throttled push to become the party of government?

The answer involves both strategy and policy. Strategically, the appointment of Mr Fukuda – a far less easy target than the hapless Mr Abe – poses problems.

The new prime minister has all but abandoned any attempt to extend a special law that allows Japan to refuel allied ships in the Indian Ocean. The DPJ had been using the threat of a veto as a weapon. That has now been neutralised.

Keiichiro Asao, the DPJ’s shadow defence minister, says: “If Fukuda decides to make new anti-terror legislation the issue, that is good for us. But it is not so likely any more.”

His party may now put forward an alternative bill that satisfies the DPJ’s demand for any international deployment to be conducted under a United Nations mandate. That would probably involve abandoning refuelling operations and instead training a civil police force and participating in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) activities in Afghanistan.

This strategy is not without risks. Japan’s public is split on whether to support the Indian Ocean operations and could blame the DPJ if suspected of blocking an ex­tension to gain political points or for opportunist reasons. Mr Fukuda is also likely to exploit differences of opinion within the DPJ, some of whose members, including the former party head Seiji Maehara, are more supportive of refuelling operations than the official party line permits.

The fight over the anti-terrorism law aside, Mr Asao says his party will use its upper house majority to press for an early dissolution of parliament. “We would like to see a general election as soon as possible. But I think Fukuda will try to delay it as long as he can.”

One possibility, he says, is that the LDP will argue it would be irresponsible to risk a change of government before Japan hosts the Group of Eight Summit next July. Putting off an election, say political analysts, could give the LDP time to regroup and banish the memory of the unfortunate year under Mr Abe.

If strategy will be tricky, explaining how the DPJ’s policies differ from those of the LDP may prove trickier still. The ruling party is a big ideological tent with foreign policy hawks and moderates, free marketeers, protectionists and social paternalists. But so is the DPJ.

When Junichiro Koizumi was in power, the DPJ claimed to be the true party of market reform, whose clothes Mr Koizumi had stolen. To many people, these days it looks more like the LDP of old, promising financial support for farmers and a more inclusive society.

That is a misunderstanding, says Kohei Ohtsuka, chairman of the DPJ’s upper house policy council. “It is not a contradiction. We were the ones who first said we need to instil market principles, but that doesn’t mean leaving poor people behind.”

Mr Asao argues that on foreign policy his party’s policy is based on international law and better relations with Asian neighbours, not on blindly following the US.

Even more than offering a different set of policies, Mr Asao says, the DPJ holds out the promise that the LDP could be forced into an extended period of opposition for the first time since the war. “In any democratic country, it’s good to see a change of power every 10 years or so,” he says.