Full Throttle in Turning Right

The annual national convention of Liberal Democratic Party on Sunday showed a great upheaval in applauding political handling of Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. Its action plan, or annual party platform, for 2014 included definite promotion of Abe policies: constitutional amendment, visiting Yasukuni Shrine, positive pacifism, designated secrecy law, or revision of textbook authorization. The party is simply a driving force to make Japan go rightward.

On constitutional amendment, the plan proposed nationwide town meetings in all over Japan to encourage opportunities for selling the policy. Regarding Abe’s ambition to announce exercising of collective self-defense right late this year, which would raise arguments of unconstitutionality, the party leaders thought it was necessary to persuade public that the amendment would be inevitable for security reasons.

However, the party ignores possible backlash from neighbor countries on Abe’s historical revisionism. The action plan declared that it would succeed political movement to visit to Yasukuni Shrine, and that it uphold respect for the people who constructed the state basis and renew determination for eternal peace. Although it considered injecting words of “with determination of maintaining no-war resolution and concept of peaceful nation,” the phrase was deleted from the draft.

The party is also making efforts to persuade public to let them understand Designated Secrecy Act, which allows bureaucrats to arbitrarily register “special secrets” to hide them from public eyes. Including provisions to reject request from legislative branch to open information, the law became a symbol of oppressive tendency of Abe administration. Nevertheless, LDP lawmakers recklessly passed the law in the Diet last month. Party platform expressed no regret to it.

Positive pacifism is a phrase Abe recently likes to cite. It is to justify Japan to join international activities for safety and security, regardless constitutional restriction. The action plan, based on the concept, asserted to tighten the relationship with Asia-Pacific countries with “shared value.” It is as if saying that Japan will not build good relationship with countries that have different values, namely China and South Korea. It does not address how to rebuild bilateral relationship with those two.

LDP has traditionally been active in discussing various policies from various aspects and reserving broad room for different opinions. Now the party has no tolerance for discontent against Abe’s policy. This is one of the reasons that the administration is recognized as proceeding to despotism.