From Overseas Press

The mess in Japanese politics

(The Straits Times)
Updated: 2010-07-15 15:02

What a fine mess the Japanese have got themselves into.

For the past 10 months or so, the ruling coalition led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had dominated both Houses of Parliament, allowing the government to enact laws almost at will.

This was made possible when Japanese voters last August handed the DPJ a landslide victory in the general election, ending more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

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It was a refreshing change from the hung parliaments that Japanese voters had to put up with under LDP administrations in the few years before that.

But in last Sunday's nationwide election, the DPJ lost control of the Upper House, signalling a return to the days of stalemated parliaments.

Who was responsible for the election debacle?

Both political critics and detractors within the DPJ point their fingers at Prime Minister Naoto Kan for bringing up the idea of a higher sales tax in the election campaign when his predecessor had promised that there would be no tax hike.

Clearly, Kan did not help matters by doing so, even though his avowed aim was to warn the people that their country could go the way of Greece - which has been crippled by a financial crisis - if nothing was done to address Japan's serious fiscal problems.

But ultimately, Japanese voters are really to blame for what happened on Sunday.

The Japanese have always been wary of giving their governments too much power and have often used Upper House elections to prune back the ruling party's representation in parliament.

Nevertheless, voters on Sunday gave the greater share of proportional representation seats to the DPJ, indicating that the Japanese still have high hopes that the DPJ will be able to solve the country's woes - a ballooning national debt, high-cost social security systems and an economy that is still fighting off recession.

But at the same time, voters also gave too many seats in local constituencies to the opposition, making it almost certain that many government Bills are likely to be stalled or rejected in the Upper House in the coming months.