Japan to go to polls as uncertainty lingers
Date November 15, 2012 - 5:39PM
Ready to dissolve Parliament in two days. Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. Photo: AP
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said today he is ready to dissolve Parliament in two days, setting the scene for December elections that could end his administration and thrust Japanese politics into more uncertainty.
A nationwide ballot could usher in another prime minister in a country that has seen a rapid succession of them and, with no clear projected winner, deepen Japan's political inertia at a difficult time for the country.
Tokyo is embroiled in a damaging territorial dispute with China, and Japan's economy, mired in deflation, is edging toward its third recession in just over three years. Reconstruction after the tsunami and nuclear disaster last year is stalling, the population is declining and public debt is rising.
The move Wednesday to dissolve Parliament was prompted by more dealings with the opposition, this time for help with a much-needed debt financing bill and changes to Japan's electoral system. Abe said his party was ready to cooperate in return for elections.
The elections could return the Liberal Democrats to power three years after the Democratic Party defeated them. Before 2009, the Liberal Democrats had held almost uninterrupted power for over a half-century.
The campaign is likely to focus on the planned increase in the consumption tax, negotiations for a contentious trans-Pacific free-trade agreement and the future of Japan's nuclear policy. But policy differences between major parties are murky at best, and often there are splits within parties, which could mean a confusing choice for Japanese voters.
The Liberal Democrats could take a bolder stance in monetary easing to pull Japan out of deflation, however. Abe has pushed for legislative changes that would give the government greater control over the central bank, including the power to fire the bank's governor if it does not bend to the government's will.
The Liberal Democrats are also likely to push harder to bring Japan's idled nuclear reactors back online, though that could be an unpopular policy amid still-heightened public concerns over their safety.
The nationalist leanings of Abe and of the splinter parties led by Hashimoto and Ishihara have raised concerns that Japan's foreign policy could shift more to the right, further damaging the country's relations with its Asian neighbours. Tokyo has already demonstrated a stronger willingness to face off with China over a set of disputed islands in the East China Sea, despite the damage to Japan's exports to a major trading partner.
"To put it bluntly, the current of nationalism in Japan is getting stronger," Soichiro Tahara, a leading journalist and political commentator, wrote in the Weekly Asahi magazine this week. Too nationalist a tone threatens to isolate Japan, he said.
