Shinzo Abe's First 100 Days: Sasaki Takeshi

The Duality in the Relationship With Koizumi’s Government.

It is said that the team currently leading Shinzo Abe’s government is inviting a lot of confusion. I also think that things will not go well the way they are. However, since I haven’t seen things first hand, I do not know what the situation is really like. This may be out of place, but, the Prime Minister included, none of the main members of the leadership team for the government have ever been ministers. That is to say, they have no experience of how the Japanese government mechanism functions. This is very worrying.

Shinzo Abe, who has only been the chief cabinet secretary, the finance minister and the minister of public affairs, so to speak, a group of people, who have never headed a governmental office responsible for carrying out political policy, constitute the core of the government in the Prime Minister’s office. It is not possible to view this fact itself as either a bad thing or a good thing. However, I think it will be a tremendous task for such a team to really get this country’s government moving.

Moreover, the fact that the government is yet to be elected by the people is becoming a handicap. It will be essentially very difficult to compensate for this.

Also, since there was no strong command post to begin with, whenever the question, “what should be done?” arises, there is a difficult problem of keeping resistance and other reactions from the ministries in check. In Koizumi’s government there was a Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, and with this the government managed to make a breakthrough. Indeed, there were many debates concerning that approach, but one could say that, during the transition period it acted as a mechanism to help the cabinet become functional.

A decision was made there, then an agreement was reached on it in a cabinet meeting, and finally the policy was implemented. So in a certain sense, one could say, in order to bring about this weakening of the cabinet’s functions, a section of the ministers were put in this council, along with citizens, although there were various discussions about how much authority they had, and they contributed to enlivening the activities of the cabinet.

It became very clear that, as a command post, the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy functioned well, so, after a certain period, it was possible to use that council to focus on all issues.

When Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet was inaugurated, I at first thought that, “This is going to be a ‘cabinet, that wears itself out quickly.’ The government is creating various councils and committees within the cabinet and appointing aids for the people in charge of them. Yet, within each ministry similar kinds of bodies already exist. There are committees and councils for educational reform, Revitalization Committee and Central Education Council on Educational Reform, but whatever the government ministry or office, similar bodies already exist. This sort of heavily stratified structure is complicating the matter.

Who has authority and where does that authority end? Who is assigned to what and to what extent? Nobody knows the answer. Although work is being done, the issues that have been decided on are not being followed through with. Compared to how hard they are working it is proving not to be very enjoyable, and therefore it has reached a stage where several signs of dissatisfaction and irregular comments have been allowed to slip out.

There are five government aids and each wants to work, but for some reason things aren’t functioning well and the decision making system is becoming extremely scattered.

Whether it is an individual’s abilities or their authority, there are limits to both. When there are limits then you must conduct yourself accordingly or else you will tire yourself out. First, you have to judge whether you can manage something directly by yourself and what your limits are. Even though the foundations have been laid, whether you can really complete the job with care could ultimately depend on the number of jobs you are dealing with. If numbers increase too high then you may not be able to achieve anything. So, in this sense, as far as the decision making system was concerned, Shinzo Abe’s government was lacking in preparation.

Moreover, rather than solving the problem, Shinzo Abe’s government has made various comments about the issues and then simply created more committees. This pattern seems to be repeating itself. People who speak bad of the government say it is simply creating committees for the sake of it. Other people view the situation in an extremely cold manner and say that, rather than thinking about the results of the committees, the government wants to create an image so that in a glance it looks as though things are happening. Therefore, the moment the committee is set-up nobody has any interest in it any more. I think this is an extremely exhausting and bad situation that the government is starting to fall into.

I also have my doubts whether a single Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy is a good thing or not. However, if you really want to implement policies, then in effect you have to focus power in one place. You also have to prioritize various things. Monitoring is also important. If you are dealing with just one discussion then everyone has to focus attention on that and if it turns out to be inappropriate, state so. However, if you try to carry out four or five discussions simultaneously then no-one will pay attention at all.

The Committee for Educational Revitalization will act as a test, since it has been saying it will convert the various proposals that it has been making into a bill in March. If they cannot keep this promise what will happen? If a bill is not drawn up by the deadline then what will they do? In a certain sense it will become an issue of responsibility taking. For example the minister for science and education has been speaking as if he is not necessarily going to adopt each and every one of the suggestions that the Committee for Educational Revitalization has been making.

It cannot be claimed that aids have been assigned politicians. The point at issue is what is hoped by appointing these politicians? The desire to deal directly with the various problems that surround the Prime Minister is understandable, but it is unknown whether they have thought about what they will do after they have dealt with these problems.

To a certain degree I do not wish to say that I can’t understand how the government can fall into such a situation. I think the matters, that Koizumi’s government did not deal with during its time have caught the eye of Shinzo Abe’s government. I think it wants to continue to distinguish itself from Koizumi’s government and deal with the various issues that Mr. Koizumi did not deal with. In order to get the government aids involved, it has set up various committees. I understand well the government’s intention.

However, it is not good that it appears to be a group of friends gathered together. It is necessary to create a team that can do the job. That is to say a team is different from a group of friends and so far the team has not functioned effectively and with results.

Observing this state of affairs I feel that in many respects, Shinzo Abe’s government has Koizumi’s government on its mind. The government wants to distinguish itself from Koizumi’s government but it is concerned with people saying, “Koizumi did this, but I thought you were different from Koizumi’s government.” If Koizumi’s government had not existed then perhaps it would not have been necessary for the present government to deal with so many issues.

Therefore, in that sense, I think either directly or indirectly the government is being overshadowed by Koizumi’s cabinet’s image.

In that sense, Koizumi’s influence is a great one.

This government is a closely-knit one, or in other words a democratic group, however, since last year talk has been of a personnel change that needs to be made in that team. The view is that the team needs to be changed into a group that can more effectively perform the job at hand.

This year the problems have amplified and irregular comments have been made and I think that if things continue this way it will be difficult to reverse the negative tendency in the government’s rate of support.

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