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The 'Ozawa Regime' and the future of the DPJ

Reading Time: 3 mins

In Brief

As the master chess player of Japanese politics, you can be sure of one thing: that Ozawa chose the timing of his departure with a clear strategic purpose in mind. It’s certainly blunted the impetus behind the LDP's recent political advance as well as its attack on the DPJ.

You can also be sure of something else: that Ozawa will both manage his succession and continue to pull the strings behind the scenes in the DPJ as long as he draws breath.

Apparently he manipulated his colleagues into limiting Saturday’s election of his successor to DPJ Diet members only, rather than open up the election to the party's non-Diet members (where the outcome could not be so easily guaranteed).

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This leads me to question Tobias’ comment in his post that ‘presumably Okada Katsuya’ will succeed Ozawa. One has to admit that the quartet of failed and scandal-tainted leaders in the DPJ doesn’t leave a lot of decent choices, but Okada’s not the man as far as Ozawa is concerned: Hatoyama Yukio is.

Putting Hatoyama as the guy out front would enable Ozawa and the DPJ to keep the ‘Ozawa Regime‘ in place. This article reports that the DPJ leadership election is ‘fixed’, meaning the outcome – engineered by Ozawa – is a foregone conclusion.

Hatoyama apparently is prone to compromise (i.e. do Ozawa’s bidding) much more readily than Okada, who reputedly has a stubborn streak and likes to go his own way. Hatoyama also seems to have the numbers amongst the major factions within the DPJ: the Hatoyama and Ozawa groups, and the groups of former SDP/DSP members (amounting in total to about 95 certain votes compared with the 50 or so from groups headed by Maehara and Noda backing Okada).

Okada himself has no ‘group’ of his own. If Hatoyama wins, it means Ozawa has won. That’s how the result of this election on Saturday should be interpreted: a victory of party back-room dealing over internal party democracy, with Ozawa pulling the strings.

The DPJ needs to be mindful of political realities, however: it’s about to go to a general election, and Hatoyama gives new meaning to the term ‘charisma bypass’. He’d be good news for the LDP – another tired, ex-LDP hereditary politician with minimal appeal to younger voters (and the younger generation of DPJ Diet and party members as well).

It’s significant that an increasing number of LDP and New Komeito Diet members hope that Hatoyama will win the DPJ leadership, because he’ll simply be seen as an Ozawa ‘puppet’. It’ll certainly make Aso’s job easier.

Okada’s political baggage, of course, includes the 2005 election disaster, but he’s a ‘clean skin’, which is a distinct advantage if the DPJ wants to try and erase the legacy of Ozawa’s most recent money politics scandal. There’s no doubt that some floating voters will return to the DPJ with Ozawa ‘gone’. They weren’t inclined to give him a ‘happy ending’ to his much chequered political career – i.e. the prime ministership.

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