Shinzo Abe's First 100 Days: Heizo Takenaka

The Issue of Creating an Agenda.

If we restrict ourselves to the first 100 days of Shinzo Abe’s administration, I believe the biggest demand posed was how to bring about “early small successes”.

The Cabinet has many quite difficult administration issues, with some political issues being easily answerable and others not so. It is, however, essential for the administration to provide some examples of early small successes in the period following inauguration, however small they may be.

Well, as for the results, I think that there have been some more than small, but rather some early medium or even early large successes in foreign policy. These were the first to come after inauguration. However, I believe that because these successes came first, efforts to produce early small successes in economic and domestic policies have been neglected. In other words, I think there were no early small successes in terms of economic policy.

Another issue is whether or not the Abe administration is continuing political reformation. I believe it is. The media severely criticized Abe’s budget, but I believe his budget for the 2007 fiscal year was rather good. Thus Abe is not straying from the most important of his main points. This is one thing I think we must give him proper credit for. They are making a budget following a stricter scenario than that created in the days of policy chief Nakakawa which cuts annual expenditure in order to create a smaller government. This in particular should be commended.

In addition to these comments, in order that political policies reach fruition, one must go through 4 specific processes. The first of these is the formation of a well-organized agenda. It is absolutely imperative to know what will be carried out both economically and politically, and, on top of this, it is also essential to know when it will happen. The second is to have a basic outline on how to put this agenda into practice, and the third is an actual system plan. This includes writing up the legislative bills themselves. The fourth is the reaching of consensus at various instances. Assessment must occur while looking at these four points.

As is depicted in the opinion poll conducted by Genron NPO, the reason we don’t know what the Abe administration wants to do is because they actually have not formed a sufficiently organized agenda. I may be repeating myself, but the Abe administration is not straying from their main points. However, in a way this is a problem that is connected with the issue of early small successes. As to whose role it was to form an agenda, it has to be the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP).

Besides that, the Prime Minister’s passion in heading towards political reform is sufficiently felt. That is to say, there will be constitutional reform. I think the impact of this will be sizeable. They are also making changes in foreign policy. Of course Koizumi and Abe both have different ways of showing their passion, and there is no real need for them to be the same. They exhibit different points of interest as well, which is also a given.

The problem is, the strategy lies in the details. Policies are made of many finer points stacked one upon the other, meaning that if you don’t pay close attention to these finer points you won’t be able to determine the efficacy of the policy itself. Because bureaucrats are the ones who know the ins and outs of these finer points best, they always look to water down the policies. We try not to let them do this. This is one point.

During the period I was trying to deal with the issue of defaulted loans, I received help from a number of different people and developed an extreme attention for details. It’s because of this that the bad loans went away. The postal privatization period was also a situation in which we manipulated the bureaucrats’ methods by means of some of the finer details in order to implement the reforms. To give one example, the opponents of privatization continuously demanded to keep the post offices across the board, nationwide. They were quite particular about the wording of “across the board, nationwide.” However, wording it like that would maintain the status-quo, meaning new managers wouldn’t be able to exhibit their own discretion in matters. In the end, what is written in the bill is “being able to make use of post offices across the board, nationwide will be a central focus.” “Kept across the board nationwide” is not written. It says people will be able to “make use of” the post offices across the board, nationwide, and moreover this will be “a central focus.” This is actually our ideal strategy – taking what bureaucrats do and turning the tables on them.

Unfortunately, our control in these situations under current circumstances isn’t always adequate. The important people are the aides and responsible cabinet ministers, as the Prime Minister can’t take such detailed looks into such matters. So the Abe administration isn’t straying from its main points, but there are slightly open seams. On top of that, the current assessment is that the advisory council wasn’t able to establish an agenda.

One final assessment by the public is that the only ones capable of continuing the reformation process are the Abe administration. While this is an unspoken opinion, I do think it exists among the public. If looked at from another angle, the fact that the Abe administration is looked upon harshly is also an assertion of expectation. Since the economy itself is acceptable, even if there are open seams it won’t fall apart immediately. If these open seams are allowed to accumulate over the course of three or five years however, the potential for growth will begin to fall off. The question of how exactly to grasp these open seams is an important issue to address from here on after the 100-day period.

Translator: DOUG DURGEE

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