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| January 1, 2011 |
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| Emerging Rightwing Trend |
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Japan’s political scene is shaky. Nobody would be surprised, if something queer should happen. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has changed its political stance after becoming the government. It follows directions of Japan’s financial circle and the government of the United States without any hesitation. People ask themselves whether the DPJ government is less harmful than the previous government of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). What does the alternation of government mean? It is time for us to pause to analyze the situation and take actions.
ORGANIZE AND GET UNITED TO COUNTER THE GOVERNMENT POLICIES!
The DPJ made pledges in the Manifesto: child allowances, free tuition fee for high school students, compensation payments to individual farmers and a thorough review of public construction works, including a dam at Yamba, north of Tokyo, along the line of ‘priority of human beings to public construction works’. Voters relied on and expected the new government. They thought that it might energetically work on revising the controversial laws, including the Workers’ Dispatch Act, and reviewing the Special Health Care System for the Elderly over 75 years old.
People watched how the DPJ government overhauled the national budget as it had employed a drastic policy to cut wastes in the transparent way. People expected that the new administration would adopt a new fiscal policy, as bureaucrats, the financial circle and the US government had led budget compilations for many years. Many people, including residents of Okinawa, welcomed former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, who had pledged ‘to withdraw the Futenma Base from Okinawa Prefecture to relocate it in other region as the minimum condition’. People looked at his initiative to build East Asia Community, thinking that Japan’s diplomacy might go smoothly with US on the equal basis and build up better relations with the neighbors.
That is a simple, sincere idea of citizens in general about the DPJ government.
The new government, however, has betrayed, first, the pledge on the Futenma Base issue. Then it proposed to raise the consumption tax rate in the Upper House elections. As a result, the DPJ lost bitterly in the elections. Twisted power balance has been produced in the Lower and Upper Houses. The DPJ has changed its political direction, dizzy with the power they enjoy, and fulfills requests of Big Business and the US.
Responsibilities of Left and Those Who Defend Constitution
The New Socialist Party (NSP) declared when the government altered in 2009, explaining that the change meant people’s denunciation against long reign of LDP administrations, but not an outcome of people’s movements staged at workplaces and communities, adding that it would not bring advantages on the side of working population in terms of labor and community services.
The DPJ is not based on mass movements, including labor movements, and therefore it lacks potential to break through the status quo of politics. Voters certainly had positive ideas to the new government, but the NSP claimed that voters, instead of total reliance on the DPJ, should engage in the organizational work and let people’s demands be implemented.
Numerous struggles are seen across the nation: citizens’ struggles in Okinawa, labor movements to integrate workers employed on the irregular basis, movements of public workers under severe bashing, citizens’ movements to object nuclear programs, and etc. Efforts to unify and consolidate movements, however, are not successful. People’s movements should be united and heightened to political agenda in solidarity.
It is the Left and the forces which defend the constitutional principles that should commit in this task. As the result of the Upper House election shows, however, voters did not choose this political direction.
Poverty is Cause of War
The DPJ suffers from internal conflict. Will it seeks for a coalition? The political scene is ambiguous.
A dangerous trend appears: the Kan government focuses, primarily, on crisis control. A tight finance supporters’ group and a growth strategy group have agreed to surge the consumption tax rate and seek a further deregulated trade policy, including Trans-Pacific Partnership (=TPP) Initiative. The DPJ government fortifies the trilateral alliance of the US, South Korea and Japan, taking advantage of the peculiar situation in the East Asia.
The Kan government has reduced the corporate tax rate by 5%, while decreasing pensions – that is symbolic. It tries to lift the three bans imposed on Japan’s arms export and strengthen mobilization capabilities of the armed forces, which will give huge profits to military industries of US and Japan. A no-tariff policy will kill Japanese farmers and fishermen and force workers to compete more severely.
Poverty is a hotbed of a war. Our task is to organize people and encourage them to resist the conservatives and fight against the emerging rightwing trend. Let’s enter among people in the mass movements. Let’s work together in solidarity.
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