EDITORIAL: Special interests

The government is in the final stages of budget compilation, but missing from the scene this year-end is the "annual tradition" of petitioners and lobbyists roaming the corridors of the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters and government ministries and agencies in the Nagatacho and Kasumigaseki districts of the nation's capital.

During the decades of LDP rule, it was customary for representatives of various interest groups and local administrative bodies to make their annual rounds of central government ministry or agency offices and LDP committee chambers in December in hopes of securing subsidies and funds for public works projects for the new fiscal year. This year, however, the petitioners' destination is the Diet building that houses the Secretary General's Office of the ruling Democratic Part of Japan. We are seeing only small, scattered contingents of petitioners at central government ministries and agencies.

This break from tradition is the result of the DPJ's plan to let its Secretary General's Office deal with budget-related lobbying. Although some petitioners will still go directly to individual DPJ lawmakers or the offices of the party's prefectural chapters, their cases will ultimately end up in the Secretary General's Office. In fact, some groups have already changed the addressee on their petition forms from the concerned ministry or agency to LDP Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa.

Ozawa has explained this new system as "a means for eliminating collusion perpetuated by zoku-giin (lawmakers who have expertise and contacts in specialized areas and lobby on behalf of special interests)."

True, the old system has done a lot of harm to the health of Japanese politics. Those zoku-giin lawmakers sought political donations and election campaign funds in exchange for interceding with central government bureaucrats on behalf of petitioners, while the bureaucrats got the zoku-giin to help secure budgets for their ministries or agencies and pass necessary laws. There is no question that this unhealthy structure has got to go.

But the DPJ's decision to leave everything to the Secretary General's Office raises many questions.

According to plans, the deputy secretary general and others will examine the legitimacy of each case in the light of the party's basic policy and campaign pledges. If a case is deemed legitimate, it will be passed on, together with a memo explaining the reasons, to the minister, senior vice ministers and parliamentary secretaries of the competent ministry. Among major issues, such as the planned cash handouts to families with small children and the reinforcement of highway networks, any issue that is considered especially important will be brought directly to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's attention by Ozawa himself.

What disturbs us most is that even though it is the DPJ administration's policy to let the government handle all policy-related matters, the new system allows the party to decide which petitions are worth heeding and which aren't. Would this not effectively give the Secretary General's Office the power to influence budget allocation and policymaking?

Our concern is all the deeper because of the power Ozawa holds in the party. Even though any "decision" by the Secretary General's Office will be nothing more than an "opinion," it will not be easy for the government to dismiss it out of hand. This will be especially true of "important cases" Ozawa will be bringing to Hatoyama's attention.

The whole purpose of leaving all policy decisions to the government was to reform the LDP-era structure of the government and the ruling coalition existing side-by-side, and to clarify the responsibilities of the prime minister and his Cabinet ministers.

The DPJ's deputy secretary general once told a group of prefectural governors and others in support of highway construction that their petition would be considered only if they pledged to support the DPJ at election time. Any party that dangles government budgets to lure supporters is in no position to criticize anyone.

The government should deal with all lobbyists. This can be done by putting more people in each ministry's top three parliamentary positions and increasing support staff. We believe the DPJ should have considered giving Ozawa a Cabinet post in order to unify the administration's policy decision procedure, including the handling of Diet affairs.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 8(IHT/Asahi: December 9,2009)