2009/1/28Mieko Yoshimura, a newcomer to politics, defeated incumbent Hiroshi Saito in Sunday's gubernatorial election in Yamagata Prefecture. She won by a little more than 10,000 votes.
Yamagata is a veritable conservative stronghold where all its three Lower House single-seat electorates are dominated by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Saito, 51, was seeking a second term. He had the support of a majority of the LDP. Political wisdom has it that any incumbent governor seeking a second term is deemed unbeatable.
Yoshimura, 57, had the backing of the main opposition Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan), the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party as well as a segment of the LDP. But neither Yoshimura nor Saito was officially endorsed by any of them.
Aside from the fact that the LDP was split on which of the gubernatorial candidates to back, the overall pattern of support effectively replicated the structure of government-opposition confrontation at the level of national politics.
We believe Saito's defeat owed basically to the steady weakening of the LDP's regional chapters that occurred during the five and a half years that Junichiro Koizumi's administration held sway. In addition, Saito's campaign had to contend with the extreme unpopularity of the administration led by Prime Minister Taro Aso. With a Lower House election due to be held before autumn, the outcome of the Yamagata gubernatorial race must have really shaken the LDP.
In his home prefecture, Saito was arguably the first reformist governor. Four years ago, he challenged the incumbent governor who was seeking a fourth term with the support of most LDP members of the prefectural assembly, municipal heads and the local Minshuto chapter. Saito appealed to unaffiliated voters by stressing fiscal and administrative reform, and won narrowly by about 4,000 votes.
During the past four years, Saito lived up to his pledge and tackled the prefecture's fiscal reform. He prided himself on slashing 20 billion yen in cumulative prefectural personnel costs and reducing the amounts of outstanding prefectural bonds for two years in a row for the first time. At the same time, he demanded sacrifices from residents and cut spending for public works projects and farmers.
People's reliance on agricultural and public works programs for their economic well-being is incomparably greater in rural Yamagata than in any major urban center. It was this fact that gave Yoshimura the opening she needed to challenge the incumbent: She campaigned for increased agricultural spending and promised "compassionate" policies. The regional economy is severely fatigued. With the current recession aggravating the situation, anyone could see that a turnaround had to come. It was only natural that voters in Yamagata, who had felt the "pain of reform" more acutely, sought "compassion" in government.
Still, the governor must also continue to pursue administrative and fiscal efficiency and keep reforms going to eliminate wasteful tax money spending. Any qualified political leader today must fully understand this premise and be able to persuade the voting public of its necessity. On this point, Saito perhaps failed to convey his message clearly to the public.
The Aso Cabinet has come up with a series of economic stimulus measures, including those under the second supplementary budget plan. But Aso's failure to adequately explain the purpose of his pet initiative--the controversial fixed-sum cash handout plan--is one of the factors that keep his approval rating abysmally low. When the prime minister discussed the possibility of a consumption tax rate hike as a means for maintaining fiscal discipline, he was vehemently criticized by members of his own party.
With any policy, it is its substance that really matters, but politicians are also expected to know how best to sell the policy to the public. This is obviously easier said than done, and we got a glimpse of that in the Yamagata gubernatorial race.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 27(IHT/Asahi: January 28,2009)
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