When Suga failed to gain a popularity boost from the postponed Tokyo Olympics, it not only threw the electoral schedule into sharp relief for the ruling coalition but it also threw Suga under a bus. When his popularity sunk to the political death zone of an approval rating of 27 per cent Suga accepted that the compressed post-Olympic electoral schedule meant that he had to go. On 3 September Suga duly announced that he would not run for the leadership on 29 September, setting the stage for a new prime minister to lead the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) into Japan’s general election.
How will things be different for Suga’s successor?
The selection of the new LDP leader is hostage to two counterveiling forces. One is the visceral desire on the part of the parliamentary party to ‘save the furniture’ in the pending general election (which is scheduled to be called no later than 21 October). The other is the rising pressure within the party to shift towards generational change. In selecting the next party president and future prime minister, the LDP must try to satisfy both if Japan is to avoid political instability, and a return of ‘revolving door’ prime ministers.
Whoever’s in the hotseat, the management of COVID-19 will be key. Whatever else, Suga’s successor must demonstrate bureaucratic competence in pandemic management in the eyes of a COVID-jaded electorate. This is especially important because the Japanese voting public has a record of coming out and voting in high numbers when it is disenchanted with the ruling party.
Suga acquired the mantle of leadership from Shinzo Abe in September 2020 following Abe’s decision to step down for health reasons. Becoming prime minister in September 2020 was crazy brave. Other leadership aspirants had stronger factional bases — and still do — but they ceded the poisoned chalice to Suga.
In terms of COVID-19 vaccinations, the report card for Suga was always to be ‘must try harder’. Procurement of vaccines was slow, and logistical obstacles held up the rollout. The burden of COVID-19 on hospital ICUs in Japan’s ageing society was another performance measure that Suga struggled with as Delta took off.
Suga had other millstones around his neck.
Under the terms of the Act on Special Measures for Pandemic Influenza and New Infectious Diseases Preparedness and Response, the measures available to government to control the spread of the virus relied on voluntary constraints on business and wider society. Initially financial incentives and compensation for businesses that closed early, or closed altogether, made the running.
Suga forged ahead with the GoTo Travel campaign which provided government subsidies for domestic travel to stimulate economic recovery. He was forced by spikes in infections to suspend the program on four occasions.
Abe’s shadow darkened Suga’s prospects through lingering scandal in the LDP that forced two of the three by-elections held in April 2021. The LDP lost all three, without even running in the third race. The LDP’s poor showing in the Tokyo municipal election in July was followed in August by the humiliating defeat of Suga’s candidate in the Yokohama mayoral election, with Suga losing sway even in his home constituency.
Suga’s responses to the COVID emergency revealed a core of grim determination that went beyond the acts of a caretaker prime minister. On 3 February 2021, the Japanese Diet’s upper house passed pandemic laws which enabled provincial governors to apply punitive measures to businesses which did not comply with restrictions, and to individuals who refused to be hospitalised.
As sticks replaced carrots, Suga rode a wave of condemnation by resisting calls for cancellation of the Olympics despite a state of emergency being declared in Tokyo on 8 July.
Ultimately, Suga fell victim to his COVID-19 record. Vaccination rates made him toast. Japan has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the OECD, although that is now improving.
Despite the challenge of the pandemic there is no shortage of leadership aspirants. Recent polling indicates that Administrative Reform Minister Taro Kono is the popular choice amongst the general public. If Kono can shake off the grief associated with his oversight of the vaccine rollout, he is the one most likely to drag the party towards generational change.
Sanae Takaichi has also thrown her hat in the ring with the backing of former prime minister Abe, she lacks substantive experience in senior roles and fulsome factional support. Deputy Secretary-General Seiko Noda has no factional base, but it is remotely possible she could replicate Suga’s success in forging cross-factional backing. LDP frontrunner Fumio Kishida heads his own faction and is already hard at work shoring up rank and file support.
Suga’s ultimate service to the party may be measured in his role as pandemic scapegoat, and the extent to which he can clear the field of COVID-19’s political baggage at election time for his successor.
The new leader will have little time to sell himself or herself to voters before facing the ballot box. No matter who leads the coalition to the polls, it is likely that, thanks to COVID-19, the LDP will lose its super majority in parliament as voters exact their revenge for the pandemic’s politically imposed deprivations.
Rikki Kersten is Honorary Professor at The Australian National University.
This article appears in the most recent edition of East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Confronting crisis in Japan’, Vol 13, No 3.
While this analysis is informative, I think the author misses a key point which might help explain Suga’s failure to deal with the pandemic more successfully. This was his refusal to recognize it as a public health emergency which necessitated an all out effort. Claiming that the government did not have the authority to force the complete cessation of all business activity his requests for voluntary cooperation fell far, far short of what was needed. His allowing the Go To program when travel was already known to spread the virus is another example of a central aspect of LDP policy making: never confront, let alone try to contain, corporate Japan.
This timidity in the face of corporate Japan’s all out push for profits can be seen in three other significant issues in modern day Japan. The first was the government’s refusal to take on zombie banks and other problematic financial practices after the so called asset bubble burst in the early 1990’s. The second was its efforts to salvage the nuclear power industry after the Triple Disaster in 2011. And the third was Abe’s largely ineffectual Womenomics, Equal Pay for Equal Work, and programs for so called structural reform of industry. Whatever policies that were adopted were largely symbolic and/or skirted around tackling the major issues that needed to be addressed. The LDP has always been much more inclined to serve its corporate supporters rather than the electorate.
The current situation with the pandemic is a crisis. Will Kono or whoever becomes the party’s leader take this as an opportunity to institute major, structural, and societal change? Or will he/she adhere to the LDP’s long-standing pattern of not rocking the proverbial boat of the status quo?