The ruling coalition led by the Liberal Democratic Party lost control of the Lower House in the Oct. 27 election.

The last time this happened was in 2009 when power switched to an administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan.

Voters clearly showed their anger over the slush fund scandal that had engulfed the LDP and the way it handled the matter.

They basically thrust a letter of no-confidence into the hands of the administration of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, which was sworn in less than a month ago.

The Ishiba administration badly underestimated the public’s fury and distrust over the slush fund scandal.

The LDP still outnumbers the leading opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which posted a significant increase in the number of seats it holds, and remains the leading party in the Diet chamber.

Still, Ishiba should resign as prime minister, given that he failed to achieve his stated goal of at least securing a majority of seats in the chamber between his party and Komeito, its junior partner in the coalition.

Horse-trading is likely to soon start between the various political parties over a new framework of government administration.

Mere number-juggling will only alienate the public. There must be a will to carry through with political funding reforms, which were given up only halfway. This should be the basic premise for any interparty talks.

RUSH TO ‘WIPE SLATE CLEAN’ BACKFIRES

The slush fund scandal centered around underreported income and expenditures in political fund reports, apparently a longstanding practice in the LDP, particularly with the Abe faction, the biggest and most influential bloc in the party.

That means lawmakers were breaking the rules in what could have amounted to tax evasion depending on how the money was spent. The LDP, however, was reluctant to delve too deeply into scandal and failed to rigorously hold the individuals in question to account.

The LDP did, however, agree on the need to revise the Political Fund Control Law to prevent a recurrence, but the amendment fell far short of what constitutes drastic reform.

That stance seldom changed after Ishiba became the LDP’s new president.

Ishiba refused to mount a new investigation into the scandal, even though new suspicions were being pointed out. In addition, he initially leaned toward official party endorsement to scandal-tainted lawmakers “in principle” for the election, even though he eventually withheld endorsement for some of the candidates.

Ishiba also indicated at an early stage that he could give additional party authorization to candidates who were not endorsed if the latter went on to win seats as independents. That suggests Ishiba looked upon the election simply as an occasion to “wipe the slate clean.”

It emerged, late in the election campaign, that the LDP paid 20 million yen ($131,000) in activity expenses, out of the taxpayer-funded political party subsidy, to LDP branches that are headed by candidates who were not officially endorsed.

The public rightly believed the LDP’s self-styled “remorse” over the matter amounted to nothing less than lip service and the party lacked the integrity to purify itself.

Ishiba, never a mainstreamer in the LDP, earned a reputation, both within and outside the party, for the way he did not slavishly stick to party interests alone. He was known for making cutting remarks in the presence of senior government administration officials.

But once Ishiba became LDP president and prime minister, he seemed to have done an about-face and shifted his priority to intraparty dynamics.

This was best illustrated by the way he refused to hold Diet Budget Committee sessions and called a snap Lower House election even though he had reiterated earlier the importance of sorting out Diet debate before dissolving the Lower House. It marked the shortest interval in postwar history.

UNFINISHED POLITICAL FUNDING REFORMS

The bigger the expectations, the bigger the disappointment.

The LDP’s initial intention was to replace Fumio Kishida, the unpopular former prime minister, and immediately call a Lower House election so the campaign period would be in motion before any faults of the new administration were ever exposed. That initial plan was a total bust.

When Kishida held a news conference to announce he was stepping down, he cited the slush fund scandal as well as shady ties between the LDP and the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, more commonly known as the Unification Church, as the culprits for the public’s distrust.

The way the LDP tried to skim over the church scandal, without driving out all the festering sore of the past, could be summarized as: “We will never do this again, so we call for your understanding.” That is reminiscent of the way it has tried to cope with the slush fund scandal.

Voters were shown that whoever gets around to heading the LDP ends up being caught up in the peculiar logic of insiders and is blocked from making sound arguments. The public’s lack of confidence in Ishiba amounts to a vote of no-confidence in LDP politics as a whole.

It seems likely that Ishiba, in the coming days, will approach the Democratic Party for the People, which did exceptionally well in the election, and Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party), the second biggest opposition group, to call for their cooperation.

Given the critical public perception of the slush fund scandal, the DPP and Nippon Ishin would be foolhardy to prioritize participation in the government administration without drastic political funding reforms.

If the LDP is truly serious about facing up to the people’s verdict, it should spare no effort on fact-finding efforts.

It should agree to either abolish or disclose the usage of “policy activity expenses,” money given by a political party to individual politicians, who have no obligation to disclose how it is spent.

It should also be made mandatory, during the coming Diet session, to disclose the usage of “expenses for research, study, public relations and accommodations.” These are allowances of 1 million yen a month that are paid to lawmakers. The allowances were previously called “document, communication, travel and accommodation expenses.”

The LDP should also agree to engage in discussions on the institutional arrangements surrounding political donations by businesses and other groups as well as measures to regulate political fund-raising parties.

CDP’S HEFTY RESPONSIBILITY

The LDP-Komeito coalition’s fall from majority status spelled the end of a period of “unrivaled strength” of the ruling parties, which began when the LDP returned to power, following the Lower House election of 2012, under the administration of Shinzo Abe in his second stint as prime minister.

Since then, the LDP always held an “absolute stable majority” of Lower House seats, which gave it an unchallenged initiative in the handling of Diet affairs.

With opposition parties weak and fractured, the LDP used its weight of numbers to ram highly contentious legislation through the Diet. This included national security legislation, which allowed Japan to exercise part of its right to collective self-defense, marking a sharp change in postwar government policy.

Certain policy changes were made without a broad-based national debate, as exemplified by how the national security legislation, along with nuclear power and energy policy, were reviewed under the Kishida administration.

The ruling and opposition blocs are now nearly equally matched in strength. It is the first time in quite a while for such a political situation to be in place.

This should be made an opportunity for restoring the functions of the legislative branch of government to keep watch on the executive branch to ensure careful consensus-building procedures based on full deliberation.

The CDP, led by former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, now has an extremely heavy responsibility and role in confronting the LDP and Komeito, which no longer hold a majority.

The party has the option of rallying other opposition forces to press for a change of government. It also has the option of seeking to have its own policies co-opted and realized on an issue-by-issue basis.

The CDP owes its latest victory largely to its “opponent’s error” in the slush fund scandal. The leading opposition party stands at a crucial juncture. It faces a test of whether it can turn its gains into more positive support from voters in the runup to the Upper House election next summer.

The lawmakers will elect the prime minister afresh during a special session of the Diet, which will be convened within 30 days.

The administration’s officials have no time to waste in facing problems both at home and abroad.

The United States will be electing its new president early next month. Japan has to work, toward the year-end, to compile the national budget for te next fiscal year and amend the taxation system.

Political circles should fulfill their responsibility by building a framework that the public will find acceptable.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 28