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| December ２７, 2011 |
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| Looking Back Year 2011 |
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The New Year Eve is approaching, when we look back what happened during the year. Expressions, like 'unprecedentedly' and 'that has never happened', are repeatedly used. But this year in real sense these words represent what has taken place. The world is changing dramatically. The Fukushima nuclear power plant is catastrophic. The incidents directly hit our livelihood, threatening safety itself for survival. The history of mankind faces a turning point when peoples are forced to decide on which way to go.
NEW CRISIS HITS WORLD, INCLUDING JAPAN
Politics - Functional Disorder
Things do not simply repeat. Repetitions, if piled up, reach eventually a different stage in quality. The year 2011 has seen symptoms in which the world as a whole, including Japan, is being led to a new stage of history.
First: financial crisis caused by the fiscal stalemates in the EU zone. That reminds us of the so-called Lehman Shock of 2008. The world is volatile. The Euro zone emergency, however, is a result of a policy package itself implemented to tackle the crisis. Its impact has prevailed in the countries of BRICS and the level of seriousness is far greater than that of 2008. A similar reaction that worked three years ago does not do this time.
Second: politics does not function. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ushered in serious crisis in the decade of 1990s, though it had maintained administrations for decades. Today we see similar, acute phenomena.
The LDP has advocated that the small constituency electoral system, under which two big parties could alter, should be employed as the existing parties totally fail in catching up with the changing world. But the current Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government has replaced premiers three times during a two-year period.
The Diet is incapable to make right decisions to protect people's life, manage consequences of the extraordinary earthquakes and tsunami of March 11 and the nuclear disaster, and etc., though the situation is far tenser than that of two decades ago. The two-party system does not make a difference, because the LDP and DPJ have a similar orientation and keen in tactics. Mass media rekindles today the issues on a single House system and a necessity to revise electoral districts.
Disasters Happened as Expected
Third: People's distrust in the two-party system has been transformed to distrust in the parliamentary system in general. Symptoms began to appear from the local election level. In February in the mayoral election in Nagoya City and the governor's election of the Aichi Prefecture, to which the said city belongs, the political faction led by then-Nagoya Mayor Kawamura Takashi, who insisted reduction to a half of the number of assembly members, won a big victory. Later in Osaka, though the Kawamura's influence seems to get weaker, a new political group led by ex-Governor Hashimoto, Osaka Restoration Association, won in both of the elections for Osaka mayor and prefectural governor.
In the decade of 1990s, however, the social atmosphere did not allow a 'dictatorial trend' to be popular to an apparent extent of today although people's doubt in politics was so extensive.
Fourth: the nuclear accident. Smaller scale of accidents had happened frequently. But on March 11 all the foreseen, warned hazards erupted at a time.
Meanwhile, on the side of anti-nuclear forces, a chance has come to change. In the Tokyo rally held September 19 over sixty thousand citizens participated. Movements against nuclear power generation have gained impetus to go forward. After the Chernobyl accident anti-nuclear campaigns were waged extensively, but they faded away in a short period of time. Comparing with that, the current civic behaviors against the Fukushima accident are different in quality.
Who Breaks Through Deadlock?
According to media surveys, political parties which have an anti-nuclear stance fail in winning people's attention. On the other hand, however, groups which publicly support Mr. Hashimoto could gain votes of the electorate who object nuclear power generation. The most critical is absence of subjective forces which represent people's voices and change the situation in which rights to live in safety are in peril.
Even mass media point out 'market economy destroys democracy'. Unless a counterforce is rigidly organized to fight for people's acute expectations in real term, the above-said forces to favor global exploitation and competitions for plunder by capital in the neo-liberal context could be welcomed as opposition to the market 'freedom'.
Whether Mr. Hashimoto's stance is called as fascism or not, democracy is, without doubt, reaching a critical point. Time is up. Forces to defend Constitution must stage joint actions. That is a consistent policy of the New Socialist Party.
December 27, 2011
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