Again, a Struggling Prime Minister in Japan
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Monday, December 15, 2008
TOKYO -- Japan has become a land of incredible shrinking prime ministers.
Prime Minister Taro Aso and his two predecessors have shrunk by following the same formula of fecklessness.
Without a national election or a popular mandate, they were anointed by members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has more or less ruled Japan as a one-party state since World War II and is now hanging on to power by its fingernails.
Once in power, they could not get much done, owing to gridlock in parliament, where the opposition Democratic Party of Japan controls the upper house.
While accomplishing little, they managed to frighten or offend many of Japan's elderly voters, a large and politically powerful group.
Their approval ratings plummeted below 30 percent.
Now, the shrinking process itself seems to be shrinking. It took about 11 months each for Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda to squander political capital, sink in the polls, lose heart and quit. Aso, in power less than three months, is floundering faster and fading sooner, although he appears determined not to quit.
On Friday, he rolled out his second stimulus package, an attempt to revive the sputtering economy and his plunging popularity.
"The government wants to ease the public's anxiety and take measures to end the recession earlier than other industrialized nations," Aso said in a nationally televised speech.
The package commits $111 billion in spending to improve the weakening job market and prop up the economy. But Friday's announcement is not all that new. It includes $66 billion in spending that Aso announced in October as part of a stimulus plan that he said then was his government's most urgent priority.
The prime minister has, however, refused to submit a stimulus package to parliament this year. He is expected to do so in January. The delay, as the economy contracts, corporate earnings collapse and jobs disappear, has puzzled his own party, angered the public and provided ammunition to the opposition, which has questioned Aso's judgment and his fitness to run the government.
Aso's chief cabinet secretary, Takeo Kawamura, said this week his boss will not quit because it would be bad for Japan.
