The Paper's reporter Chen Qinhan
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga People's Vision
In the ups and downs of the new crown epidemic, Japan struggled to complete the Tokyo Olympic Games, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga did not escape the strange circle of "the five rings rise and the prime minister stepped down", gave up the re-election campaign, and left the suspense of worship to younger politicians.
On September 29, the LDP presidential election officially began counting votes, and four candidates will compete: Taro Kono, japan's administrative reform minister sitting on the title of "King of Popularity", Fumio Kishida, a steady "moderate" former foreign minister, former prime minister Takashi Takashi Hayana, who was supported by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Seiko Noda, acting secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party who aspires to promote gender equality and diversity.
This is the first time that the LDP has held a complete presidential election in which all party members participate in the voting, and there has been a rare phenomenon in the history of party election in which the members of the faction do not take unified action and basically vote according to their own wishes.
In the face of an unprecedented fierce campaign scuffle, the four candidates have intensively issued policy proposals for a month and contacted the party branch federations in various places. The candidate's political patrons are also secretly laying out plans for their own power map.
Since 1955, the LDP has been the ruling party in Japan, with the exception of two brief layoffs, and thus the LDP's president is de facto prime minister. The birth of a new prime minister will come from the choice of more than 1.1 million LDP members and party members across the country, and on the other hand, the votes cast by 382 members of Parliament.
This time, who does the 27th president of the Liberal Democratic Party and the 100th prime minister of Japan, who succeeds Suga, represent?
The LDP's "Proxy War"
Some Japanese media likened the LDP presidential election to the "Sekigahara War", which was a large-scale civil war that occurred in Japan during the Sengoku period and was also known as the "war that decided the world", laying the foundation for Tokugawa Ieyasu's rule. This shows the key to the current political situation.
In fact, this modern version of the Sekigahara War is more like a "proxy war" around the LDP's internal camp.
Recently, Mr. Abe has been in his office in the Parliament Building for a long time, constantly on the phone. According to a local Japanese media outlet, China News, sources said that the Yamaguchi Prefectural Liberal Democratic Party Branch Federation received a call from Abe after 10 years and was asked to vote for Takashi Sanae.
"(You remember) When I was Prime Minister, how far did I contribute to your election? If you betray me, then I will break off relations with you. Abe told LDP MPs on the phone. According to the West Japan News, Abe has not only frequently called recently to "urge" councillors to support Takashi Sanae, while personally guiding Takashi's clothing and makeup, but also suggested that she increase her media exposure and play the role of "military master".
As early as September 16, Abe publicly expressed his support for Takaichi Sanae's candidacy for president of the Liberal Democratic Party, which gave Takashi key support for some of the LDP's largest faction, the Hosoda faction.
With two days to go before the September 29 vote, Japan's Weekly Modern said that Abe ordered a halt to the centralized voting to Takashi Sanae, fearing that excessive diversion of Kishida Fumio's votes would lead to Kono's victory in the chaos.
Hiroshi Nakanishi, a professor at the Graduate School of Law at Kyoto University in Japan, told the www.thepaper.cn that Abe's main goal is to prevent the "anti-Abe" Kono Taro from coming to power, and that both Sanae Takashi and Fumio Kishida will listen to the opinions of elder politicians centered on Abe, who are more dependent on Abe and the conservatives in the party.
Japan's deputy prime minister and treasurer Taro Aso, a solid ally of Abe, and the two were called the "2A" group (both with the roman initials of the name), and they became the elder political representatives of Kono Taro's sniper aim. According to AERA, a Japanese weekly news magazine, Aso has always distrusted Kawano, who is in charge of his faction, expecting him to become even more uncontrollable once he gains power.
As Kono and the 2A team dueled, Shigeru Ishiba, former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, gave up his campaign and joined Kono instead, showing his intention to decide the winner or loser again with Abe through "proxy". Back in the 2012 LDP presidential election, Shigeru Ishiba, who was at the top of the first round of voting, was reversed in the second round by Abe, who won the votes of various factions of the lords, and lost the prime ministership. Three years ago, Shigeru Ishiba ran for president of the Liberal Democratic Party again, singled out Abe again.
Today, Shigeru Ishiba places his hopes on Taro Kono, and with the environmental phase Koizumi Jinjiro joining, he forms the "Koishi river" alliance, which naturally forms the "anti-Abe & Aso" alliance.
"If Kono were to come to power, it would greatly weaken the influence of Abe and Aso, and the mechanics of the party could change." Nakanishi analyzed that although Kono formed an alliance with Shigeru Ishiba, if he wins the election, he may emphasize the line of inheriting Suga in the future.
Kono Taro is seen as a heretic in the LDP and goes his own way, but he and Suga are both members of the House of Representatives from the Kanagawa constituency and have extraordinary friendships. After announcing his abandonment, Suga publicly expressed his support for Kono's candidacy, and on September 23, when he was preparing to leave for the United States in Tokyo, he once again helped Kono canvass for votes, highly praising his achievements in vaccination work.
Japan's "Weekly POST" quoted relevant people in the cabinet as saying that although Suga's performance as prime minister was not good, his achievements as chief cabinet secretary were widely recognized. If Kono is elected prime minister, he may appoint Yoshihide Suga as chief cabinet secretary and continue to play an important role in the cabinet.
During his visit to the United States on the 25th, Suga told the accompanying press corps that he had no intention of joining the new cabinet. "Although [being invited into the cabinet] is a hypothesis, I have no intention of doing so at all. I still want to do what I've been doing, doing some policy work. ”
The LDP's bottom of the pyramid
LDP bosses engage in political wrestling through elections, and local LDP members are also pinned down in this intricate vein.
Morita, 37, a company in Yamaguchi Prefecture whose company has all business dealings with a prefectural councilor, joined the Liberal Democratic Party three years ago under the introduction of the councillors' office. On 18 September, he received his first vote for the LDP's presidential election. Morita told The Paper that he did not fill out the ballot paper immediately, but put it on his desk for 2 days, and colleagues told him that he might wait a few days to gain insight into the general trend of voting.
"In the past, local party members generally voted according to the general trend formed by the members of Parliament, and there would be obvious winners. But this year's election situation is complicated, the faction advocates independent voting, and many party members are encouraged to vote for the reformist Kono, and I have this idea. Morita said this, but wrote Takashi Sanae's name on the ballot because he received an email from the prefectural councillor's office asking him to vote for Takashi.
Yamaguchi Prefecture is Abe's hometown and house of deputies, Abe supported Takashi Sanae, equivalent to helping her lock in a part of the local party votes, Morita expected that the local party votes would pour into Takashi Sanae, he did not want to go against the mainstream voting, "In the election, the interest buying and attachment has been deeply rooted." ”
Abe's influence has penetrated to the bottom of the LDP because it has a pyramid-shaped network: members of parliament→ county councils→ city council members→ small and medium-sized enterprises, agricultural cooperatives, business unions, and town associations, etc., from the central to the regional interest inducement and voting action, from the central to the regional interests of the inducement and voting action.
However, Kohibashi, a city councilor in Fukuoka Prefecture, wrote on his personal website that in reality, many LDP members have little interest in politics, because members of the Diet have the task of recruiting party members at the local level, so some people are asked to join the party, their sense of belonging to the party is extremely weak, and they often learn about politics through social media and television like ordinary people, which is one of the reasons why Kono Taro has more local party members.
Kono is active on social media and has a large number of followers on Twitter and YouTube, making him popular with young people. According to a survey released by J.A.G.JAPAN, a Japanese election consulting firm, Kono's Twitter fans have no distinct group characteristics other than being young, and the content they post is rarely related to policy, and many people do not care about politics, but are attracted to Kono's personal charm.
It is undeniable that Kono's reformist image is extremely appealing to middle-aged party members in the Liberal Democratic Party and occupies a clear advantage in the local vote. In contrast, the survey showed that Kishida's supporters were more likely to come from his hometown of Hiroshima and local organizations, such as nurses' associations and agriculture, forestry and fisheries organizations, highlighting Kishida's organizational support network at the LDP grassroots.
Polls by a number of Japanese media show that Kono Taro is favored by most local party members, while members of parliament in the Liberal Democratic Party are more inclined to elect Kishida Fumio to the throne. "Kishida is a humble man, not a big achievement, but it sounds good and sound very stable. And this time many people said that 'Kishida has changed' and was alive at the press conference. ”
Former LDP Affairs Bureau Nagame Akira told the MainIchi Shimbun that the LDP's presidential election will be held immediately after the House of Representatives election, which is an urgent need for members of parliament, who is thinking about who can lead the LDP to win the house election and thus retain their seats. And this kind of thinking does not help to create a regime that is accountable to the voters.
The distance between the Prime Minister and the people
"When you grow up, can you stop eating bugs?" At the LDP's online policy discussion on September 25, the video-linked camera was fronted by Takano, a 6-year-old elementary school student, who posed an unexpected question to the four candidates as he learned in class that eating insects could become a means of protein intake to address future food crises.
On the other side of the screen, all four candidates smiled lovingly. Kishida slowed down and said, "As long as everyone works together to cope with climate change and protect the environment, I believe that you will not enter the era of eating insects when you grow up." Takashi and Noda replied that eating insects has become a trend now, and he hopes that Takano will have a chance to challenge it. Kono said he would work on developing technology to get protein from more ingredients.
The video footage was widely circulated on Japanese social networks, and many netizens believed that the candidates reflected different values and personal colors in answering questions, allowing people to see another side of their serious faces.
Four such online discussions were held, and Japanese people, including children, students, office workers, and housewives, asked questions to candidates via video link. This is the first time in the history of the LDP's presidential election that such an online policy discussion with the people has been held, emphasizing the posture of dialogue with the people, which coincides with the "pro-people card" played by Kono Taro and Kishida Fumio, but not all people buy it.
"It's more like a political show." Sho Inoue, a political science student at Ritsumeikan University in Japan, told The Paper on September 25 that he had watched the seminar because he was concerned about the COVID-19 countermeasures, but found that the candidates had hardly elaborated on specific measures, always ending with "we will seriously discuss the plan in the future", and that the policy discussion was still held within the party or the government.
Tanaka Jun, chairman of the International Strategic Research Council of the Japan Institute of General Studies, said in an op-ed in the Mainichi Shimbun that the LDP's presidential election process has always been a "storm in the teacup", and all the actions of candidates before the election are to win, and promises are often not implemented. The biggest problem with the Abe and Suga regimes is the "3S" political style of "not explaining," "not convincing," and "irresponsible."
The so-called "3S" was already reflected during the campaign, and Kishida and Kono successively turned against their own ideas. Kono had previously insisted on "de-nuclear power" and "allowing female emperors," but was asked on September 8 about the matter and avoided words, fearing angering conservatives. Kishida, on the other hand, in order to win Abe's support, denied his position to re-investigate Moritomo Gakuen's malfeasance case.
Sho Inoue said that the policies advocated by the four candidates are different and even wavering, "History tells us that any one of them who becomes prime minister may not fulfill their campaign promises one by one, but will cooperate with all parties according to the custom to find the best policy solution." The general public has basically accepted this fact, believing that the relationship between the prime minister and personal interests is very weak. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Wuwei
Proofreader: Yan Zhang