By Feng Zhaokui (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-24 07:06

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not resign after his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was defeated in the recent Senate election or "admit failure". Instead he is now preparing for a Cabinet reshuffle.

He has said: "I'll re-examine what I have to. But, I've only started working on State reform and, to implement reform policies and build a new country, I must continue to shoulder the prime minister's responsibility in the coming days."

A determination to re-examine what he has done so far is certainly not a bad thing but, for Abe, what exactly should he re-examine? And how will he as prime minister "transform" the country? What kind of a "new country" is he going to build ? No matter what, it is tied to the future of the Abe administration and his party's fate in the Lower House election in 2009.

In this writer's opinion, one very important subject for Abe to look at while "re-examining" his job is to truly acknowledge and understand the general public's concerns and the voters' choice.

In the recent Upper House election, the LDP purposely played up the "party chiefs' debate", because Abe and his campaign advisors thought he, as the suave younger man compared to his Democratic Party counterpart, sixty-something Ichiro Ozawa, held an edge over the latter not only in age but looks and oral delivery as well - actually Abe is not that good in making speeches, but better than Ozawa, who repeatedly told voters he was betting his "political life" on this election, to the point he sounded boring.

The LDP felt it would help the conservative party win more votes to play up the "party chiefs' debate" and give Abe's "appearance advantage" more prominence. Abe also asked voters confidently to decide "between Ozawa and me who will make a better prime minister" and cast their ballots accordingly, while Foreign Minister Taro Aso sang along to the tune of "Just look at Abe and Ozawa, isn't it obvious which face is more charming to women?"

Unfortunately for the LDP, the Japanese voters did not choose the face in the senate election but the brain instead, revealing the fact that the "theatric politics" popular in the Koizumi era no longer works today.

Compared to the "majority votes are for us to take" attitude of the LDP, which was used to occupying majority seats in both houses of the Parliament, opposition parties such as the Democrats were not so well-behaved either.

When Abe was prompted by a "sense of achievement" to show off his administrative flare by "ramming" a series of controversial bills put forward by his LDP through the Parliament, the DP and other opposition parties were pushed to the very limit as their objection was brushed aside repeatedly by LDP-led majority and literally fought back instead of just arguing.

The public still remember the scene during a Senate sub-committee meeting, where a woman DP lawmaker in heels scaled a desk to grab the chairman, who is a member of LDP, by the collar, with several of her opposition male colleagues all over the bewildered "man in charge".

Despite all that political incorrectness, many members of the Japanese public sympathized with the DP-led opposition parties, while the media and commentators openly expressed their concern and alarm over Abe's aptitude for abusing "majority power".

Abe has gone out of his way to show off his "blue-blood" background whenever there is a chance and proudly promotes his maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi - a wartime cabinet minister who became prime minister from February 15, 1957 to July 19, 1960 - rather than his paternal grand father, who opposed waging wars overseas.

It should be noted that Abe was so proud of his maternal grandfather that he could not wait to show US President George W. Bush during this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Organization summit an old photo of Kishi the post-war Japanese prime minister and then US President Dwight D. Eisenhower together.

That has also contributed to the oppositions' worry that Abe might be hiding an attempt to "resurrect the pre-war Japan" under the disguise of "leave the post-war era behind".

The Japanese public has always taken the bipartisan political structure featuring two leading conservative parties in control of the administration alternately as the model for political reforms. That's why more voters went to the Democratic Party in the latest Senate election, in a hope to realize a genuine bipartisan system and prevent the LDP from achieving "singular dominance" and what the leader of the Shimin Shin To Niigata, or Citizens' New Party, has described as "politics without brakes", which would lead Japan onto a dangerous path.

Compared to DP leader Ozawa's "life first" election campaign slogan, Abe's "leaving the post-war era behind" rallying cry found its "basic guideline for state administration" unconvincing.

It is widely known Japan became one of the few countries in the world with very small urban-rural, regional and individual income gaps thanks to decades of peaceful development after World War II. With personal experience as a yardstick, Japanese voters are particularly quick to notice when these gaps widen.

At a time when Japan is already feeling the pains of an aging society with a shrinking birth rate and has become a "disparate and anxious society" thanks to Koizumi's reforms, the DP locked on the general public's top concern - how to build up a society for safe living and came up with a no-frills campaign slogan of "life first", which obviously appealed to the people much more profoundly than Abe's very political, high-and-mighty rallying cry of "leave the post-war era behind and revise the (pacifist) Constitution."

In the meantime, people cannot but ask: "Exactly what is so bad about the 'post-war system' and 'pacifist Constitution', which brought Japan decades of peace, development and prosperity after the war and created the so-called 'mighty middle class of a hundred million'?"

Some foreign media made this observation: "Prime Minister Abe did his best to push for revision of the war-no-more Constitution in order for Japan to play a bigger role in world affairs militarily, but that didn't seem to click with his voters."

DP front man Ichiro Ozawa used two words in his criticism of Abe's political pursuit - "nationalism" and "authoritarianism". Abe has been emulating his predecessor Koizumi and ignored the political system enshrined in the Constitution.

He, too, wants to be a "president-like prime minister" and has appointed more aides for himself in a bid to "White-House-nize" his official residence, change the tradition of power sharing between the prime minister and cabinet ministers and establish a political structure with the prime minister's office on top.

However, the prime ministerial aide positions that Abe created and filled with his hand-picked candidates have done little so far and already given rise to unwanted arm-wrestling among bureaucratic branches. It is fair to say Ozawa was right on the mark dismissing Abe as "authoritarian".

Some of Abe's trusted men explained recently that, because Abe's "match points" - revising the Constitution and defense issues - were not the focus of the latest Senate election, it means "the result of the Senate election has not disqualified Abe's fundamental guideline, which still enjoys popular support".

But, as voters' actions have shown, the LDP would not have had a sure win even if the pension insurance record scandal had not popped up and Abe's pre-designated guideline of "leaving the post-war system behind" and "revising the pacifist Constitution" had been the "prime focus" of his party's election campaign.

Today Japan is already an aging society suffering from a low birth rate and mired in the troubles of a "disparate society" and "unsettled society". Against this worrying backdrop, the Japanese public is naturally most anxious to know how the winning party would make the nation safe to live and glad to work in.

The Democratic Party of Japan won the Senate election exactly because it found out what the general public was really thinking of and wishing for.

All said, if Abe genuinely wants to "re-examine" something, the key issue to focus on should be no other than the real cause of his party's Senate election loss. That is what he calls the "fundamental principle" for "state reform" and building up "a new country", which is to a certain extent more of an "inherent cause" than otherwise despite the fact it had to be sidelined during the election campaign.

The author is a researcher with the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

(China Daily 08/24/2007 page11)