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Japan's handling of leadership crisis highlights flaws in democracy |
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April 10, 2000
TOKYO, APR 9 (AP) - No campaign. No public debate. No raucous party meeting.
With the prime minister in a coma, the five leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party gathered - in secret - and whittled down their choices for a successor.
How the government replaced Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi after he was felled by a stroke typified the back-room methods of politics here - and, for many Japanese, highlighted the fault-lines in the country's democracy.
"There's no sense of disclosure," said Masayuki Fukuoka, a political analyst at Tokyo's Hakuo University. "Everything moves in a closed system."
The selection of LDP stalwart Yoshiro Mori as prime minister showed just how closed the system is.
Obuchi was hospitalized early April 2, but the government failed to announce it for 22 hours. Officials at the prime minister's office even told reporters Obuchi was at home when he was actually in the hospital.
The public was left to speculate for days about what was next. Government leaders refused to discuss the issue of replacing Obuchi when Mori's nomination was reportedly a done deal.
The process left many Japanese angry at being shut out.
"We don't know what is happening," said a frustrated Ichiro Kaji, 60, a music producer in Tokyo.
Back-room deals have a long history in Japan.
The LDP has ruled Japan almost uninterrupted since 1955, with the key to leadership positions the results of closed negotiations among the party's powerful cliques.
There have been periodic struggles within the party to open the process to lower-ranking members. The rank-and-file, for example, forced a delay in Obuchi's selection as party president in 1998 to allow for open debates.
Once Obuchi slipped into a coma on Sunday, however, things moved swiftly - and quietly.
Mori emerged publicly as the leading contender for LDP president Monday. A party voice vote clinched it for him the following day, and he was elected Wednesday by both houses of Parliament.
There are several reasons why the leadership's control over Obuchi's replacement was so tight.
One is the murkiness of succession under the Japanese system. With no set rule for replacing an incapacitated prime minister, leaders had wide discretion to choose a successor any way they wanted.
"In the United States, you have a vice president and the succession goes down the line," Fukuoka said. "There's no such thing in Japan."
Also, a public tussle while Obuchi was in the hospital would have been unseemly in Japan, where tradition even discourages a successor from appearing much more capable than a fallen predecessor.
And, in a culture that respects authority, public anger rarely translates into protest. Japanese often voice disgust with their politicians, but activism is considered something for specialists.
Politics is not the only area where regular people are kept in the dark in Japan.
Doctors, for instance, often refuse to tell pregnant women the sex of their unborn babies - if they are even bold enough to ask. And crime victims' access to court records of their cases is tightly controlled.
Critics say the closed political system has its price.
Mori has already sustained an unusual amount of criticism. He has not held either of the two top positions in the Cabinet - finance or foreign affairs - and has been widely assailed as a policy lightweight.
He takes office at a time when Japan needs a strong leader. The economy is showing signs of improvement but has yet to move into full recovery. And this summer, Tokyo faces a high-profile international engagement: playing host to the G-8 summit of industrial powers and Russia in July.
Another price of the closed system is rising public distrust. Obuchi himself had been under pressure to call elections before the Oct. 19 deadline, and calls for a quick vote have escalated since Mori's selection.
On Saturday, Japanese media reported that the ruling coalition is preparing to hold a general election in June to solidify its power before the G-8 summit. The election could come as early as June 4 to garner a mandate for the new alliance, the mass-circulation Asahi Shimbun newspaper said, citing unidentified LDP sources.
"Election pressure is going to mount from the opposition," said Fukuji Taguchi, professor of politics at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. "This cabinet has never been judged by voters."
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