Dying Bipartisanism

The national convention of the Democratic Party of Japan on Sunday marked the difficulties for its survival as a part of bipartisanism in Japan. The restarting event from terrible defeat in the general election last December only showed the party’s shrinking shape and poor mind of leaders. In their new party platform, one can see the fact they have even lost their identity as a party. The fundamental responsibility of them is to survive not for themselves, but for the health of Japanese political system.

The platform adopted in the convention was to determine DPJ as a reformist party. Without doubting its autotelic characteristics, it sets a goal as returning to the leading position. Not thinking about what they do after returning to it, the leaders easily suppose to renew the platform, while appealing the platform is permanent.

New platform dropped the word “fraternity,” which was a catchphrase of one of the founders of the party and former Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama. It added “workers” on three targets of their political activity, “ordinary livers, taxpayers and consumers.” Hatoyama, lost his seat in the election, has been a symbol of DPJ’s idealism. At the point of restarting, the party said goodbye to the founder and seemed to have decided to rely on old socialist ideology of “vanguard of proletariats.” Deeply disappointed to the defeat of the election, the leaders could not see anybody except union leaders who still deal with the party softly.

The result of the election, however, did not show that everyone had left the party. The complicated election system of the House of Representatives produced a great amount of dead vote for DPJ. These voters could return back to DPJ in next election. The biggest mistake DPJ leaders had made at this point was unintentionally turning their back to ordinary supporters who take their position at the center or relatively right. Since the labor unions do not possess enough votes for constructing one part of bipartisanship, the possibility of taking back leading position is getting smaller.

Some of the opposite parties, such as the Restoration Party and Your Party, criticize DPJ’s attitude of leaning on labor unions. Labor union is actually a target of jobless people who are furious at vested interests union workers enjoy. For the leaders of DPJ, however, labor union is one and only a driving force for their candidate to the election of the House of Councillors this summer. We can expect that the result of the election will be horrible for DPJ and the coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito is going to get majority in the house as well as in the House of Representative, which may be good for the stability of Japanese politics.