Three years ago last week, having campaigned on a platform of “putting people’s lives first,” the ruling Democratic Party of Japan triumphed in the country’s historic general election, overcoming a Liberal Democratic Party that had ruled almost uninterrupted for more than five decades. Yet two (soon likely three) prime ministers later, the DPJ has lost its way.
How? For a start the DPJ has managed to make itself hugely unpopular by ditching most of its main campaign manifesto pledges and letting the country’s bureaucrats redefine the policy agenda. Having determinedly pursued and achieved the controversial policies of restarting nuclear power generation after the Fukushima disaster and setting in place a timetable for raising the consumption tax, it’s clear that Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his party have achieved little else, and the DPJ looks likely to have power wrested from it by the LDP at the next election, which many expect to be called this autumn.
With the credibility of the liberal alternative once personified by the DPJ in tatters, the form of the next government is increasingly seen as a choice between a so-called grand coalition of the LDP, its long-time ally New Komeito, and an emasculated DPJ on the one hand, and a radical conservative “Great Reset” alliance led by the populist, authoritarian mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, together with a right wing-dominated LDP dominated by the likes of former Prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Hashimoto, a lawyer and TV celebrity before becoming mayor, presents himself as a decisive outsider who delivers results, and he has vowed to eliminate all vested interests in government. The LDP, for its part, steadfastly refuses to learn any lessons from its 2009 rout. Yet despite only lukewarm public support, polls show it easily ahead of the DPJ, and the country’s first past the post system leaves Hashimoto and his like well-placed to capitalize. Grand coalition or great reset, Japanese politics looks set to resume its rightward drift...
Via GPS on CNN
