Popularity can't hide dangerous character of Koizumi Cabinet: Akahata editorial, April 27, 2001

Koizumi Jun'ichiro, who won a landslide victory in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, was elected prime minister by both Houses. The Koizumi Cabinet made up of the LDP, Komei Party, and New Conservative Party has started.

Reflecting the prime minister's interest in gaining popularity, the new cabinet includes women and non-parliamentarian people. The question is what the politics of the new cabinet mean for the people.

Irresponsible hawkish remarks

Koizumi won the presidential race by promising to "change the LDP and change Japan." In spite of his radical slogans during the presidential campaign, the wide gap between Koizumi's true self and the people's expectations has already begun to surface.

The first thing he did as the new LDP president was to agree to go along with the old coalition partners, including the Komei Party. This typically shows that the basic stance of the Koizumi Cabinet is no different from the Mori Cabinet, which was rejected by the people and forced into resignation.

This is most clearly illustrated in the latest tripartite coalition agreement which opens with a pledge for an early implementation of the "emergency economic policy package" of the Mori Cabinet and its ruling parties.

It calls for specific legal and budgetary steps to be taken to immediately dispose of bad loans and to set up a stock-buying body designed to benefit major banks, general contractor construction companies, and other large corporations. These measures would rapidly increase unemployment and bankruptcies, reduce household consumption, and go deeper into the vicious spiral of economic recession, far from helping the economy to recover.

Clearly, the Koizumi Cabinet is neither qualified nor capable to overcome the present difficulty, as the cabinet has shown itself to be the uncritical successor to the failed LDP-Komei politics which forced the economy and the people's livelihood to crawl to the bottom.

In the last year, Koizumi propped up the Mori government as the head of the LDP president's faction, and proceeded with the three-party politics. Not a word has come out from him about this, either in simple reference, apology, or self-criticism.

In particular, the coalition between the LDP and the Komei Party (supported by its parent religious organization Soka Gakkai) has been the LDP's worst choice. It is what the Hashimoto (formerly Keiseikai) faction's control of the party "by the force of numbers" has arrived at. During the presidential campaign, Koizumi referred to the possibility of "cooperating" with parties other than the Komei and the New Conservative Party. Wasn't this because he could not ignore the strong repulsion of the LDP coalescing with the Komei Party?

Without examining the reason why the people are so antagonistic towards the LDP-Komei government, Koizumi soon after the LDP presidential election moved to continue with the same coalition. How can the new prime minister explain this to the people?

The new government's lack of fixed principle is confirmed by Koizumi's irresponsible hawkish remarks. Tokyo Shimbun on April 25 pointed out that the new government is "making a rightwards shift without any fixed principle."

At a news conference held just before Koizumi's nomination as the prime minister, he professed that he wants to revise Article 9 of the Constitution in order to recognize Japan's Self-Defense Forces as armed forces and to allow government officials to visit Yasukuni Shrine. Such a statement, ignoring the remorse for Japan's war of aggression and the principle of separation of government and religion, has never been heard, even from previous LDP presidents.

Koizumi too easily overrides the framework of acceptability which successive LDP governments have reached after heated discussions with people. He never takes a moment to consider the impact his remarks might have on the world, and particularly neighboring Asian countries. This reveals how dangerous his unrestricted hawkish position is.

What LDP and Komei have in mind

"If I become a prime minister, my first task will be to fulfill what I promised during my LDP presidential campaign," Koizumi stated. And the Komei Party did not request Koizumi to retract his dangerous remark and made an alliance agreement with him. The Asahi Shimbun of April 26 is to the point when it states, "In short, the Komei Party wants to stay in power."

The LDP-Komei government wants to use Koizumi's popularity to their benefit, but this popularity is foredoomed to disappear as the new prime minister's true color comes to light. (end)