EDITORIAL: Noda faces a herculean task

Newly elected Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda formed his Cabinet on Sept. 2. The team he put together, along with top posts in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, indicate that he had three key objectives.

His first priority was apparently reconciliation between rival groups within the DPJ. In a gesture in that direction, he picked two members of the group led by former DPJ chief Ichiro Ozawa for his Cabinet.

Due partly to his attempts to restore harmony among party members, the Cabinet lineup has a low-key feel. Noda chose all his ministers from among Diet members. Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, the top spokesman for the new government, is probably unfamiliar to many voters.

During the DPJ leadership race, Noda said he would not dissolve the Lower House for a snap election because public support for the DPJ would not rise quickly. His Cabinet choices apparently reflect that pledge and that view. This is good news if it represents a first step toward policy formation not governed by short-term political exigencies ahead of elections.

THE YOUNG TURKS

Noda's second priority was a generational change. He is the third youngest postwar prime minister. Five members of his Cabinet are in their 40s.

There is little doubt that he is seeking to put an end to the "troika" DPJ leadership of Ozawa, Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan. The latter two are Noda's immediate predecessors as prime minister.

Noda is clearly trying to give young, up-and-coming lawmakers within the ruling party opportunities to develop their leadership skills.

Noda and three other lawmakers who assumed key Cabinet and party posts--Fujimura, Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba, and new DPJ policy chief Seiji Maehara--were all elected to the Lower House for the first time in the 1993 election, when the Liberal Democratic Party was ousted from power. They were all candidates of opposition parties, including the Japan New Party, whose head, Morihiro Hosokawa, was prime minister of a non-LDP coalition government between 1993 and 1994. This exemplifies the changes now taking place in Japanese politics and is a fresh reminder that the old-fashioned LDP, criticized as money-driven and corrupt, is history.

Some may worry that these young politicians lack the political skills needed to perform their important jobs. However, we welcome their appointments in the expectation that they will mature as politicians with experience.

POLICY CONTINUITY

Thirdly, Noda tried to ensure continuity in government policies following the March 11 earthquake and nuclear disaster. He reappointed the ministers in charge of reconstruction and the response to the nuclear crisis.

He also assigned the national policy and welfare portfolios, the two key Cabinet posts for integrated tax and social security reform, to the two legislators who have been in charge of the issue within the Cabinet and the ruling party, respectively. This is a reasonable move since this urgent policy issue requires leadership from people who understand their subject.

Noda is the sixth prime minister in five years. We believe the Diet must regain its ability to build consensus and implement policies so that the new Cabinet can deal effectively with the challenges facing the nation.

Under the so-called 1955 regime, the LDP's virtual monopoly on power in the postwar period, the main opposition Social Democratic Party did not actually seek to take power from the ruling party. The Socialists did not field a sufficient number of candidates to win a majority in the Lower House.

The SDP defined its mission as influencing the ruling party's policies through political maneuvering. Its high-profile stonewalling and boycotting of Diet sessions, with legislators walking at a snail's pace to filibuster initiatives, were designed to attract public attention to certain issues and put pressure on the ruling party to agree to the opposition party's demands.

As a new era of head-on competition for power between the two major parties began, the opposition party started concentrating on efforts to topple the government. This resulted in chronic partisan bickering, sometimes over surprisingly unimportant issues. Opposition control of the Upper House has jammed the legislative process.

However, we no longer live in an age of ideological confrontation between political parties. Powerful social and economic trends like globalization, low birthrates and the aging of the population impose limits on the scope of policies that can be adopted and the means to achieve political goals.

There is, for instance, no practical way to build new nuclear reactors. All the parties have to acknowledge the fact that the number of reactors in operation will decline in the future.

Given this political reality, it is hard to argue that there are unbridgeable differences over key policy issues between the DPJ and the LDP. There should be more issues on which the two parties can find common ground.

Noda has proposed policy talks between the DPJ, the LDP and New Komeito in three key areas, including integrated tax and social security reform. The LDP should agree to that proposal. Social security programs like the public pension program cannot be changed easily even if power changes hands. Raising funds to finance these vital programs is a key policy challenge for both the ruling and opposition parties.

The ruling and opposition parties should work together in pushing through integrated reform. This is clearly a time to evolve from a "politics of confrontation" to a "politics of consensus."

THE FUTURE IS IN VOTERS' HANDS

Under the current political situation, bills cannot be enacted unless they are approved by the opposition parties. Those parties should play the central role in developing this politics of consensus. They are sure to win more public support by making sincere efforts to find compromise by putting forth easy-to-understand proposals to revise bills, instead of making unreasonable demands that the ruling party accept their proposals in their entirety.

Voters, for their part, need to fairly assess the parties' contributions to the realization of policies and take this into account when deciding how to cast their votes.

Currently, there is more serious political confrontation between intraparty groups than between the two major parties. Both the DPJ and the LDP are deeply split over the issue of tax increases, for instance. Unfortunately for the immediate future of Japanese politics, this is the reality of our two main parties. The DPJ was united only for the sake of taking power and the LDP was united only for the sake of remaining in power.

The new Cabinet will likely face a Diet plagued by divided control of its two houses and policy division within its major parties. If the ruling and opposition parties fail to come to terms, with the prospect of a snap election looming over proceedings, the new Cabinet will collapse before long.

The fate of the new governments is in the hands of voters. The question is whether voters will be able to accurately assess the feasibility and credibility of various proposals likely to be made at the Diet, many of which will be aimed at winning votes. It is, after all, the voting public who will change politics.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 3