Tanaka's dismissal can be beginning of fall of Koizumi government -- Akahata editorial, January 31, 2002

Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro dismissed Tanaka Makiko as foreign minister and Nogami Yoshiji as vice foreign minister over the exclusion by the Foreign Ministry of non-governmental organizations (NGO) from an international conference on assistance to Afghanistan. House of Representatives Rules and Administration Committee Chair Suzuki Muneo, who pressured the Foreign Ministry into barring the two NGOs, announced his intention to resign from the post.

The point at issue is that Suzuki, who has no authority over diplomatic affairs, meddled in the important preparations for an international conference and that the foreign minister and the administrative vice foreign minister in their Diet replies completely contradicted each other. These developments are almost unheard-of.

LDP vested interests mentality

By taking measures that blame both sides, Prime Minister Koizumi helped to prevent the facts from coming out. He said nothing in answer to questions about who did what, and all he did was to keep the matter covered up.

The heart of the matter is that a foreign ministry bureaucrat, in submission to a Liberal Democratic Party politician representing special interests in the Foreign Ministry, has harmed an international conference. This is also a reminder of the long-standing bad practices maintained in Japanese politics by politicians' groups that represent special interests in certain ministries and agencies and use their influence not only in domestic politics but also in international conferences held in Japan.

Telling lawmakers not to fuss over the matter, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro took a by-stander's position and turned his back on the effort to establish the truth. The foreign minister and the vice foreign minister told completely opposite stories in the Diet. The Koizumi Cabinet did nothing but issue a "unified view" that effort should be made for facts to be confirmed.

The cabinet is reluctant to eliminate the covert activities of politicians with special interests, even though aware that they have caused a diplomatic blunder, more proof that the Koizumi "reform" is a fake,

The Foreign Ministry's submission to influential politicians vividly shows that no progress has been made in the ministry's "reform," which the Koizumi Cabinet publicly promised.

There are suspicions that secret funds of the foreign ministry changed hands to the Cabinet Secretariat and the money was used to bribe Diet members of opposition parties except the Japanese Communist Party. This outrageous political corruption scandal remains unsolved.

The Koizumi Cabinet has uncritically followed the foreign policy of the United States, including the U.S. Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, and other international pacts, even though the Japanese people's aspirations for the protection of the global environment and for a nuclear weapons-free world are trampled on.

What should be reformed is LDP Koizumi foreign policy.

The reason the prime minister gave for dismissing Tanaka as foreign minister is that the second supplementary budget for FY 2001 and the budget for FY 2002 need to be enacted. Prime Minister Koizmumi, who previously rejected the idea of a conventional type of supplementary budget, had no choice but to submit a conventional-type supplementary budget under the pressure of the serious economic recession deepening under his government. In order to have these budgets enacted at all costs, Koizumi could not but oust the foreign minister, even knowing that this will weaken his political base.

This dilemma is a reflection of the failure of the Koizumi "reform" and of the underlying no-way-out position of LDP politics.

Pressure from a politician representing special interests has influenced foreign policy. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg of LDP politics in which covert activities of special interest politicians actually influence national politics. A typical example is the continuation of wasteful large-scale public works projects which involve a lot of vested interests related to LDP Dietmembers.

People's power has the key

Taking advantage of the people's anger at such corrupt LDP politics, Prime Minister Koizumi in the past tried to sell his commitment to reform.

The dismissal of the foreign minister is a sign that the process of the fall of the government has begun, because the people are now aware that the Koizumi "reform" is nothing but a desperate effort to carry on LDP misgovernment. Whether the government really ends or not depends on the power of the people who are angered by bad policies imposed on them by this government. (end)