Note to Shinzo Abe: revising the Japanese constitution won’t build a better future
Kevin Rafferty says the victorious prime minister’s obsession with constitutional revision will only lead to increased regional tension, and certainly won’t help Japan tackle its long-term demographic dilemma
The media in Japan and abroad heralded Shinzo Abe’s “landslide win” in Sunday’s election. If you look at the numbers, the landscape has barely changed: Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner Komeito both lost seats and scraped through to a slender two-thirds majority in the lower house.
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However, the largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democrats, has a mere 55 seats and the next biggest has 50. More pertinently, these two parties bitterly oppose each other, and in many aspects Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike’s Party of Hope is to the right of Abe.
Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike speaks during a mayors' conference in Paris on October 23. Koike’s new Party of Hope was touted as a potential rival to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party but had a disappointing result in Sunday’s election, finishing third. Photo: AP
The result might encourage Abe to ditch Komeito and ally with Koike. This would give him 21 more seats for his cherished ambition of amending Japan’s pacifist constitution – an issue Komeito is lukewarm on. He could dangle before her the dream of taking over from him after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. It would be cynical, but typical of Japan’s politicians.
Winning the election was the easy part. Even after three election wins and five years in power Abe has not realised he has limited political capital and must spend it wisely. Nor has he understood that leaders of sophisticated modern countries do not have magic wands to change things they don’t like.
A Saitama resident carries her baby as she reads an electoral leaflet of Party of Hope leader Yuriko Koike on October 18. Koike attempted to appeal to women, who have had little success in achieving lofty positions in Japan’s business world but who also have been encouraged to have more children. Photo: AFP
Abe cannot command the economy to grow at more than 2 per cent without painful reforms, or somehow stopping Japanese people growing old, or getting women to have more babies. Nor has he managed to persuade the ruling barons of Japan Inc to put more women into boardrooms or senior managerial positions, or to contribute more of their cash reserves to higher wages, all of which would boost the economy.
