JIN-496 -- "Can't buy me love" by Taro Aso and the LDPs

Wed Jan 14 11:20:53 JST 2009

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J at pan Inc Newsletter
The 'JIN' J at pan Inc Newsletter
A weekly opinion piece on social, economic and political trends
in Japan.
Issue No. 496 Wednesday January 14, 2008, Tokyo

What are you going to do when you have 2 trillion yen to hand out and nobody
wants it? Well, there are probably a good number of people who would take it
off your hands I would imagine, but maybe the majority of people would think
you're an idiot… a saint even? A recent Asahi Shimbun survey regarding the
government's latest stimulus package didn't go into detail as to whether the
average person thought Prime Minister Taro Aso was either of these two
things. What it did ask was whether voters believed the stimulus package
would kick-start the economy - to which 71 percent percent replied "no."

Pork-barrel politics is a favorite maneuver of the LDP but there are only so
many times that you can throw money out in the form of stimulus packages
before people start to grow weary of them. It has been at least a couple
years since any stimulus package was seen as anything but an attempt to
boost the sagging popularity of the ruling party.

In the Asahi's survey, 63 percent of voters said they opposed the handout
program. 71 percent said that it would not be effective at all while only 18
percent said it would actually help the economy.

And it seems that the stimulus package is unpopular not just among a wide
cross-section of voters but also among the LDP loyalists – 43 percent of LDP
supporters surveyed said the handout program should be dropped altogether.

Early last month, the approval rating of Aso's Cabinet fell to 19 percent
from 22 percent. This was the lowest since Aso took office. As mentioned in
a previous JIN, Aso's approval rating fell to a level lower than both Abe
and Fukuda's when they left office. According to the Asahi it now matches
Fukuda's lowest rating while in office. But it's not just Aso suffering in
the popularity stakes. When asked which party, they would support in a Lower
House election, only 25 percent of those surveyed chose the LDP. On the
other hand 38 percent chose opposition party Minshuto.

Aso's decisions on policy have largely been viewed as missteps by the
public, his fiscal 2009 budget, which aimed to stimulate the economy rather
than continue Koizumi's plans to rebuild, were met negatively. Now, at a
time when the public is looking to its leader to provide some kind of answer
to the dire state of the economy, Aso continues to do little to impress.

Minshuto can smell blood too. Opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa and his cohorts
having been attacking the stimulus package as they attempt to force Aso to
call a snap election. There was talk of an election being called in late
October last year but following everything that happened in the world
economy it became impossible for that to happen.

It will now be even harder for Aso to call an election with the approval
ratings so low. As for the stimulus package, the government will no doubt go
ahead and spend the money but you have to wonder what it is really going to
do. Hopefully some businesses will benefit from it -- the LDP certainly
won't.

Michael Condon
Editor-in-chief
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