Close Ally, Former Foreign Minister Is Seen as Front-Runner
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 13, 2007
TOKYO, Sept. 13 -- The departure of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who stunned Japan on Wednesday by announcing that he was quitting after a year in power, appears likely to weaken his party's long hold on political power, embolden an already cocky opposition and stall economic reform.
A day after his declaration, Abe was treated at a hospital for an ailment unknown even to those in the government, officials said.
The prime minister had for weeks been a walking political disaster, embarrassed by scandals in his cabinet, unable to shake a reputation of incompetence and humiliated in a July election in the upper house of parliament.
Until Wednesday, though, Abe had insisted that he would not quit without a fight against the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which now has the votes in parliament to kill an Abe-backed anti-terrorism law. The law authorizes a refueling operation in the Indian Ocean -- a free gas station that has been Japan's primary contribution to U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan.
With his abrupt resignation, Abe has brought delay and a measure of chaos to the dispute about the future of the fueling operation, which President Bush and other leaders have urged Japan to continue.
Debate on the issue, which had begun this week, is on hold until the lower house of parliament, still controlled by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), can pick a new prime minister.
The front-runner for the position, in the view of many analysts here, is Taro Aso, a close ally and fellow hawk on security issues. A former foreign minister under Abe, he is a wealthy member of the Japanese political establishment and secretary general of the ruling party.
But Aso, 66, grandson of the prime minister who negotiated the peace treaty that ended the postwar U.S. occupation of Japan in 1952, is not considered likely to push aggressively for the economic changes that were launched by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and continued under Abe.
Aso declined to comment Wednesday about his interest in becoming prime minister, but analysts here said that if he got the job he might back away from reform efforts to deal with mountains of bad bank debt in Japan, while renewing the pork-barrel spending in rural areas that has given the ruling party its traditional power base. Aso said recently it was important to help rural areas hurt by deregulation.
That base has eroded substantially under Abe, so much so that the party's ability to govern has come into question.
"The LDP no longer has the ability to rule," said Minoru Morita, a longtime political analyst. "Politics will not move forward unless you have someone very capable at the top. There is no such person in the LDP."
The leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Ichiro Ozawa, used Abe's resignation announcement as an occasion to repeat his promise to kill the anti-terrorism law that allows Japan to pump free fuel into allied warships in the Indian Ocean.
Ozawa has made it clear that he wants to derail the refueling operation as a way of demonstrating to the public the weakened position of the ruling party and to force the LDP to call a snap election for the lower house of parliament. Polls suggest the LDP could lose that chamber as well.
As for Abe, the grandson of a prime minister and, at 52, the youngest prime minister since the war, it was a wonder to many Japanese that he clung to power as long as he did, given his political predicament.
His judgment in picking a cabinet proved extremely faulty, as scandals and ineptitude had pushed four ministers to resign and one to kill himself.
With poll numbers dipping below 30 percent, he had became an object of ridicule, derided as a "spoiled little boy" by cultural critics and broadly faulted for a nationalist agenda that neglected a tightening economic squeeze felt by many Japanese, especially in rural areas.
The perception of his competence collapsed, opinion polls showed, when he failed to respond aggressively this spring to disclosures that 50 million pension records had been misfiled.
On Wednesday afternoon, Abe concluded that the game was up. He announced what has been obvious to the Japanese people since midsummer.
"In the present situation it is difficult to push ahead with effective policies that win the support and trust of the public," Abe said during a nationally televised news conference.
"I now believe we need change," he said, looking weary. "We should seek a continued mission to fight terrorism under a new prime minister."
When he came to power, succeeding the immensely popular Koizumi, Abe enjoyed high ratings in opinion polls and had some early success in improving Japan's tense relations with China and South Korea. He also pushed through an upgrade for the country's Defense Agency, giving it full ministry status for the first time since World War II.
But Abe appeared to squander his popularity on nationalist issues, which did not resonate with the electorate and which upset many people outside Japan.
He championed patriotic education in public schools and backed away from his nation's previous apologies for a wartime policy of forcing women to become sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.
Contrary to studies of the "comfort women" issue by the Japanese government, which disclosed more than 100 documents showing Japanese military involvement in the establishment of brothels and recruitment of women, Abe insisted there was no documentation proving that the military coerced Asian women into prostitution.
The prime minister did not announce a date for leaving office but said he had told his party's leaders to search quickly for a replacement.
Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.
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