Dissolution of Your Party

Blown by the unilateral decision of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to dissolve the House of Representatives, one opposite party decided to dissolve itself. Lawmakers in five-year-old Your Party, which had been suffered from consecutive power struggle inside, agreed with breaking up their party later this month. They want to be rescued by other parties to maintain their seats in the House. But it is not so easy to survive.

Your Party has been separated in two groups, one was seeking merge into Democratic Party of Japan and another was looking for cooperation with Abe administration. Current President Kei-ichiro Asao has been discussing with the leaders of DPJ to raise integrated candidates in the electoral districts, based on bitter experience of independent candidacy in each district caused sweeping victory of Liberal Democratic Party, common enemy of them.

A troublemaker of Your Party was former President Yoshimi Watanabe, who stepped down with his money scandal earlier this year. He was known as a deliberated reformer against bureaucratic rule in the government, when he was Minister of Executive Reform in the first Abe administration. After Watanabe resigned as the minister with the break down of the administration, he left LDP and established Your Party with Asao or other colleagues.

But it is likely that Watanabe could not criticize his former boss after coming back as LDP Prime Minister. He led Your Party to support ill-reputed Designated Secrecy Law and reinterpretation of the Constitution to exercise collective self-defense right. On the other hand, cooperation with LDP eroded Your Party’s original policies such as getting rid of nuclear power generation or prioritizing political reform to raising consumption tax rate.

The dissolution of Your Party showed hard situation for a third party to survive in basically bipartisan election system. To defeat firm coalition between LDP and Komeito, the opposite parties need to be integrated, leaving no room for the third party. In the last election of the House of Representatives, Restoration Party was the third position a little behind DPJ. However, the party was separated between Future Generation Party and Innovation Party. Reorganization of the opposite parties resulted in fragmentation of powers.

It is necessary for DPJ, as the biggest opposite, to include those refugees in party reform. However, DPJ is originally a union of lawmakers with different idea. Accepting too many lawmakers will cause further trouble inside. Policy discussion is definitely needed for reinforcement of the opposite power.