July 25, 2011

DPJ: our manifesto was too optimistic

Prime Minster Kan Naoto at an Upper House Budget Committee meeting on July 22 apologized for non-fulfillment of his party’s key promises made in the 2009 election manifesto with which the party had called upon voters to replace the old government.

PM Kan said, “The Democratic Party of Japan was too optimistic about securing funds. I apologize to the general public for our inadequacy.”

DPJ Secretary General Okada Katsuya on the same day also apologized to his counterparts from the previous ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Komei Party. He said to them, “Our consideration of the need for our policies and of their feasibility was insufficient. I honestly apologize for that.”

These apologies provoked a backlash from inside the DPJ itself. At the head of the inner protestors, is former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio. He was the DPJ leader when the party drafted the manifesto in question. He criticized the present DPJ leadership for “having thrown out something as important as our lives.”

House of Representatives member of the DPJ Matsuno Yorihisa, who served as a sub-spokesman for the ex-prime minister, on July 22 demanded that Secretary General Okada retract the statement of “apology”. Matsuno said, “We cannot tolerate the party giving up its administrative and fiscal reforms and abandoning the very meaning of the government change by pulling down the manifesto.”

Behind the DPJ leadership’s “reviewing” of the manifesto lies the fact that the DPJ has to court the LDP and the Komei Party because it needs the two parties’ cooperation to enact a government bond bill that will guarantee funds for FY2011 extra budgets.

DPJ abandons its counterproposal, the manifesto

A party campaign pledge is a commitment to the general public. The 2009 DPJ’s manifesto was supposed to be a “counterproposal” to the LDP-Komei style “structural reform” policy that had harmed people’s living conditions. At least on the surface, the DPJ was intending to rebuild people’s livelihoods at that time.

Now that the DPJ is on the way to review its manifesto in order to please the previous ruling parties, the party is bringing a return to the old LDP-Komei policies which Matsuno claims, “abandoning the very meaning of the government change.”

In the first place, the controversial bill on which the DPJ government is dying to get the two parties’ approval contains budgets to maintain corporate tax cuts and preferential taxation for stock dividends as well as a budget for stationing of the U.S. forces in Japan.

The DPJ also wants to incorporate further tax breaks for large corporations and an increase in the consumption tax to 10% from the present 5%. The DPJ has already showed itself to be the same party as the LDP and the Komei in this regard.

Hatoyama and his followers are reacting against such an LDP-Komei policy line being adopted by the DPJ.

However, Hatoyama is the very person who brought a return to the conventional way in selecting a candidate site as an alternative to the U.S. Futenma base in Okinawa. He at first promised that he would replace the base outside Okinawa or even outside Japan, but he changed his mind after just one year and chose to relocate the base from one place to another inside Okinawa.

Matsuno, who called on Secretary General Okada to retract his “apology”, was also working for such a wavering prime minister.

Ignoring this and criticizing the present leadership for breaking the DPJ promises, they cannot convince the public of their sincerity.