EDITORIAL: New DPJ leadership

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has established his new Democratic Party of Japan leadership.

As party secretary-general--the most visible face beside the prime minister in the upcoming Upper House election campaign--Kan chose Yukio Edano, minister in charge of government revitalization in the previous administration of Yukio Hatoyama.

Edano is a staunch critic of his predecessor, Ichiro Ozawa. From the overall lineup, it appears that the new administration is keeping its distance from Ozawa.

Ozawa's "old-style politics" were a key reason the public eventually rejected the Hatoyama administration, even though the previous government was at first enthusiastically welcomed for its regime change and promise of a "new era in politics."

The Hatoyama administration was beset by its leaders' money scandals--as was the case when the Liberal Democratic Party was in power. Ozawa's election campaign strategy, which relied on outright pork-barrel politics, also reeked. And Ozawa ran the party with an iron fist, muzzling dissent. Over time, voters grew bitterly disillusioned.

Kan is right to make a clean break with old-style politics in choosing party executives. Learning from the mistakes of his predecessor's dysfunctional administration, Kan aims to establish a new system for centralized policymaking, which will be key to demonstrating his own administration's ability to govern and implement its policies.

Kan revived the party's policy research committee, which Ozawa had scrapped, and appointed Koichiro Genba as its chairman. Genba, chairman of the Lower House Committee on Financial Affairs, has also been tapped as Cabinet minister in charge of promoting a new concept of public service as well as civil service reform.

Genba was among the first in the party to urge a restoration of the policy research committee. He has also been working on the party's campaign manifesto for the Upper House election. The manifesto for last year's Lower House election proved to be unrealistic because it lacked the funds to pay for all those promises. The party must ensure that the new version is fiscally viable.

As coordinator of both party and government policies, Genba's responsibility is serious.

First off, his roles must be clearly separated from those of the chief Cabinet secretary and the minister in charge of national policy, who are primarily in charge of coordinating policies within the Cabinet.

Officially inaugurated on Tuesday, the Kan Cabinet has just a week left before the current Diet session adjourns, although some within the ruling coalition say a two-week extension is likely.

An extension will be certainly necessary. But the ruling coalition should not use the extra days simply to steamroll the bill to review the postal privatization process through the Diet just because this legislation will help the coalition in the Upper House election.

This controversial bill raises many questions, and the ruling camp ought to kill it for now and start over from scratch.

As for other proposed legislation, the ruling camp should try to pass only those that will help enhance its aim of enabling politicians to lead the policymaking process, such as bills to upgrade the National Policy Unit from an "office" to a "bureau" and to add more lawmakers serving as parliamentary executives at ministries and agencies. We believe passing these bills should take priority during the extended Diet session.

Where is the Kan administration really headed? How well has it assessed the mistakes made by the Hatoyama administration and what has it learned?

The new administration must explain its position clearly to voters before the Upper House election. And for that, intelligent Diet debates are indispensable, especially between Kan and opposition leaders and at budget committee sessions.

Kan has been choosing his words carefully since becoming party president. This is understandable, given that his predecessor's loss of credibility owed much to the flimsiness of his words. But offense, not defense, has always been Kan's forte. A polemicist such as Kan must not run away from battles of words.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 8