EDITORIAL: Disenchanted voters

It is as if the bottom has fallen out of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. Support for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama registered a dismal 25 percent in the latest Asahi Shimbun opinion poll.

　A rating of below 30 percent generally means that the Cabinet is in "dangerous waters." It has taken just seven months since its inauguration for the Hatoyama Cabinet to reach that unenviable position. Last September, it had a 71-percent approval rating, the second-highest ever.

The latest poll figure spells serious trouble, but not just for the administration. People who feel let down by the DPJ are not impressed by the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, either. That's because the LDP seems neither ready nor able to change and engineer a comeback.

These disappointed people are now joining the ranks of unaffiliated voters en masse. They accounted for 54 percent in the survey, more than double the support rate for the DPJ. The percentage of unaffiliated voters is exceptionally high, compared with findings for past administrations.

To woo unaffiliated voters, two new parties were formed this month: The Sunrise Party of Japan (Tachiagare Nippon) and Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Soshinto).

We have a distinct sense of deja vu here. In the 1990s, a major overhaul of the Lower House election system heralded the arrival of numerous new parties. A dizzying period of unprincipled, self-serving party alignments and breakups ensued. Party politics in the legitimate sense went out of the window, and the ranks of unaffiliated voters swelled like never before.

Given the current state of politics, the nation can ill-afford to repeat that mess now. The crisis enveloping the Hatoyama administration must not be allowed to evolve into one of party politics.

What has gone wrong? One factor could be that none of the political parties seems to really understand that their relationship with voters has changed fundamentally since the 1990s and that there is no such thing today as an entrenched support base for any of them.

Even though the old trick of "bartering" benefits for votes to secure "loyal customers" has long ceased to work, the ruling DPJ is still resorting to that tactic. Obviously, the party has yet to understand what changes have really come about.

We can only conclude that the DPJ holds the voting public in low regard. But voters are becoming more discerning every year. In the survey, 57 percent of the respondents cited the Cabinet's "lack of executive competence" as their reason for disapproval.

There is no funding to back the DPJ's election pledges. On the thorny issue of the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Hatoyama spoke wishfully of "at least moving (the base) outside Okinawa Prefecture." Regardless of whether or not they are with the Hatoyama administration on these matters, the people have seen through the administration's inability to think and plan its policies carefully and follow them through. The people are now aware that, in a manner of speaking, the check cut by the Hatoyama administration will likely bounce.

The administration's stance to let politicians plan and decide policies is fine in itself. But removing seasoned bureaucrats from the equation has only exposed the inexperience and incompetence of lawmakers, causing voters to question the administration's ability to govern.

It is too late now for the Hatoyama administration to scrap its election promises and rely on bureaucrats again. The DPJ has no choice but to rewrite its manifesto and make it fiscally practicable before the Upper House election this summer, so that it will be able to compete on policy with the opposition camp. The DPJ also needs to reconfigure how politicians and bureaucrats should share responsibility and make effective use of the expertise and competence of bureaucrats.

The Congressional Forum for New Japan, made up of members of the business community, academia and others, recently came up with a set of proposals and stressed the need to whip political parties into shape. Unless the parties wake up, more people will abandon them.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 20