EDITORIAL: Election maneuvering

Had the outcome of Sunday's Shizuoka gubernatorial election been different, it would have had a major bearing on Prime Minister Taro Aso's decision to dissolve the Lower House for a snap election.

As things turned out, Heita Kawakatsu, an independent running with the backing of Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) and two other opposition parties, edged out the candidate supported by the ruling coalition.

With the Shizuoka election, four major local elections have now been held that pitted ruling coalition candidates against Minshuto-backed aspirants. The ruling coalition has suffered four defeats in a row.

The latest defeat was all the more of a setback because of a split within the Minshuto campaign, which should have been an advantage for the ruling coalition. Even though Aso has always argued that local elections should be viewed as having a direct bearing on a Lower House election, his Liberal Democratic Party is anything but taking the Shizuoka defeat calmly.

Aso still appears set on dissolving the Lower House immediately after the Tokyo metropolitan assembly election this coming Sunday and calling a snap election in early August. But LDP members who are clamoring for Aso to step down are now speculating openly that, should the party lose the Tokyo poll, too, anti-Aso forces within the party will coalesce swiftly to oust him.

This will raise the questions of when the Lower House will be dissolved, and whose call that will be. Whom does the party intend to tap as the party president to fight the election? The election is already just around the corner, and yet the party is unable to define its direction at this critical juncture.

Public mistrust in the Aso administration runs deep. To make matters worse for the administration, voters are weary of its repeated erratic behavior, the latest example of which was a half-baked attempt to reshuffle the Cabinet and the party's executive lineup.

In a recent Asahi Shimbun poll, 68 percent of the respondents gave the thumbs down to Aso for caving into pressure from within the ruling coalition and abandoning his plan to freshen the LDP executive lineup. As for the party's tapping of Miyazaki Governor Hideo Higashikokubaru, a popular comedian-turned-politician, to run for the Lower House, 44 percent of the respondents said their opinion of the party worsened as a result.

Notably, voter turnout for Sunday's Shizuoka gubernatorial ballot was more than 16 percentage points higher than four years ago. In an Asahi poll of Tokyo voters, 89 percent of the respondents said they are "interested" or "very interested" in the July 12 metropolitan assembly election.

These numbers must indicate that voters around the nation--not only in Shizuoka and Tokyo--now really want to make their ballots count by bringing an end to the political doldrums.

As for replacing the prime minister prior to the Lower House election, Asahi's nationwide poll found that 65 percent of the respondents did not buy the idea. Presumably, the message was that the voters will not be fooled by this cheap LDP trick aimed at improving the party's image by removing its unpopular leader.

The purpose of the next Lower House election is to examine the LDP administration's achievements since the last election and let the ruling and opposition camps compete on how they intend to run the country. While local elections can be an indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of individual political parties, it would be pointless to change the party's "face" for a national election based on the results of a local election.

In that sense, Aso is perfectly right in his argument that the upcoming Lower House election ought to be considered separately from the local elections.

Junior coalition partner New Komeito wants to delay the Lower House dissolution. We must remind New Komeito as well as all ruling coalition lawmakers: Cheap tricks will not work anymore.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 7(IHT/Asahi: July 8,2009)