Japanese elections used to be drab, predictable affairs. This time, it was an exciting, revolutionary event.
The excitement is not due to the entry of a new party into the fray or the emergence of some colorful Lone Ranger from the margins. The excitement was brought about by the man at the helm and the same party that dominated Japanese politics for decades.
The man at the top is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, both leader and nemesis to his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Early in the vote count, the results showed the LDP stunning the opposition as well as Koizumi’s detractors in the party with a landslide win. For the first time since 1990, the LDP now controls an absolute majority in the parliament.
This is both an election and a party purge – a unique phenomenon in and of itself. This early, the outcome of the voting is being proclaimed a vital turning point in Japanese politics.
The stage for this landmark political event was set by Koizumi himself, when he called for early elections to deal with resistance to his reform program. The key issue in this revolution of sorts in Japanese politics was the privatization of Japan’s postal service and the mammoth postal bank.
The postal service is one of the most revered institutions in Japanese society, exercising an omnipresence in the lives of citizens. It is also one of the most inefficient organizations in Japanese society, the symbol of the malaise that has now plagued what was once a competitive economy.
Koizumi wants to sell off this asset, valued at trillions of dollars, to help pay down the fiscal deficit accumulated by the Japanese government through years of hidden subsidies and bailouts of inefficient banks. The proposal was anathema to the ideological predisposition of the opposition Socialist Party and distasteful for the conservatives in Koizumi’s own LDP.
Understandably, the matter was trapped in the parliamentary grind. The issue of privatization was going to be the key question that could condemn Koizumi’s leadership to the dustbin as another one of those unremarkable administrations that ruled Japan with little controversy and little headway. Or, the issue could be the one that elevates Koizumi’s time at the helm to the status of one of the exemplary episodes in the life of the Japanese nation.
Koizumi chose this issue to do battle with the inertia that was grinding down Japan. He chose to do battle with the very institution that represented the establishment in Japan: the LDP.
So, rather than run the gauntlet of parliamentary politics, Koizumi brought the matter to the voters by way of an early election. He pitted his allies in the districts controlled by his own partymates who were resisting his policy reforms. This was his unique way of purging his party of policy conservatives and winning enough leverage in the parliament to push through his programs.
This was a major gamble for Koizumi. He staked his leadership on an issue that, at first glance, did not have much populist appeal. Selling down a revered institution in Japanese life hardly seems to be the issue of choice to spark a revolution.
This strategy required a lot of courage on the part of Koizumi. It was a strategy that basically asked the voters to restore the grand old party of Japanese politics to power in order to shake up the policy architecture that was holding Japan down.
Koizumi pulled it off with aplomb.
The voters gave him a vote of confidence by way of a landslide victory. Koizumi’s hand is now strengthened. He is control of his own party and his parliament. The road is now clear for a package of policies that will ensure that Japan will find its place in the new economy.
This is not a wild gamble on the part of Koizumi. He knew the key to winning this battle lay in educating the Japanese public on the importance of undertaking reforms – including a policy reform measure that involves selling down an institution as revered as the postal service.
Public diplomacy was the key to winning this battle. And Koizumi, obviously, conducted his public diplomacy well.
This is what leadership is all about. Japan is fortunate to have, at this time, a leader in Koizumi.
With Koizumi’s leadership, Japan could break out of the lethargy it now finds itself in. The relative economic stagnation that plagued Japan has been due to the persistence of old ways of doing things, old ways that do not cohere with the challenges of the new global economic order.
Japan can choose to remain comfortable in the old ways of doing things and court the certainty of being left behind by new competitors who dare to experiment with new things. Or, Japan can choose to experiment with new ways of doing things although these things might require some discomfort at the onset or involve trashing institutions that have fallen into inutility.
The only institution that can change Japan at this moment is the same political party that instituted the old policies that worked well in another age: the LDP. The only way that can happen is for the old party to have a new, brash leadership that is not afraid to think in a new way.
It is never easy to change the course of societies – more so, societies so deeply rooted in tradition and so comfortable in the gains of past success as Japan is. It is never easy to find the right leader to do so in a politics so ingrained in the old ways of selecting who will wield power.
The fact that Koizumi, with his strange mane and unconventional temperament, is prime minister is a feat by itself. The fact that Koizumi found the boldness to challenge the establishment with the very instrument that holds that establishment together defies all odds.
That boldness, happily, has been rewarded by voters willing to shake off old conventions and uncover a new way to the future.