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about Asia Buzz
Letter from Japan: Party Tricks
The Liberal Democratic Party is set to return to power
By PETER McKILLOP
June
9, 2000
Web posted at 1:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 1:30 a.m. EDT
Everyone in Japan, it seems, is fed up with the Liberal Democratic Party's lock
on political power. Everyone, that is, except the LDP. While its titular leader,
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, continues to make a fool of himself, with its aging
leaders dropping dead or retiring, and with popular polls showing evaporating
support, one would think that the curtain was finally coming down on this
extended drama.
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 ASIAWEEK
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Intelligence
The story behind today's news from the editors of Asiaweek
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Think again. Getting rid of this gang of political hooligans will not be easy.
While polls show that only 12% of Japanese support the LDP, chances are the
party will finagle a way to stay in power after the parliamentary election
scheduled for June 25.
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TIME
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One-party rule in Asia is hard to displace, whether the leaders are Communists
or not. Like their political counterparts in neighboring China, North Korea,
Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, the LDP is a master at retaining political
power despite the wishes of the majority. The LDP does not maintain power
through tyranny or fear like the Chinese Communist Party does. Nor does it use
the repressive instruments of the state to squelch a real opposition like is
done in Vietnam or Singapore. Nor does it rely on the cult of a single political
leader like Malaysia or North Korea.
The LDP maintains power much the same way political parties in large American
cities used to: by mastering, some would argue gerrymandering, the levers of
electoral politics. By controlling how people can vote, who they vote for and
where they vote, the LDP, like the great past American political machines of
Chicago and New York, can almost guarantee victory.
LDP apparatchicks have been working overtime in recent weeks to ensure that they
get the biggest bang from their declining electoral base. In the small rural
towns and medium-sized cities where the LDP remains strong, politicians are
running around at a feverish pace, while the opposition struggles to mount what
appears so far to be a very feeble challenge. The result is that while more
people will probably vote against the LDP than for it, their votes will be
diluted by the inability of the opposition to present a single opposition
coalition. At the same time, a well-organized LDP effort ensures that every vote
for an LDP politician will count.
The LDP has also shown that they are still masters of political ceremony. The
party cynically used the funeral of former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi this week
to shore up the party's faltering public support. Held more than six weeks after
Obuchi was cremated, but only two weeks before the election, the funeral was a
master piece of political theater. The giant portrait of Obuchi in the cavernous
ceremonial hall, the acres of flowers and the hundreds of bowing dignitaries was
something one might expect at a funeral for Mao or Kim Il Sung not a relatively
obscure Japanese politician. Mori himself spent much of the funeral trying to
look like a "statesman" by meeting and greeting any world leader he could find.
The cost for such political manipulation is high. In the United States and
Britain, the ability of Ronald Reagan and his Republican Party and Margaret
Thatcher and her Tory Party to dislodge the ruling parties in the early 1980s
created the populist mandate needed to support a drastic overhaul of their
nation's economic policies. That ultimately led to economic recovery triggered
by fundamental structural reform.
In Japan, such political will is missing, and will continue to be missing as
long as the LDP uses their well-honed electoral tricks to remain in power.
Ticked off at Asia Buzz? Turned on? Talk back to TIME
Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com
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