When Mori may be less
Japan has a new Prime Minister. But will he be anything other
than a successful political infighter?
By Tim Larimer/Tokyo
April 10, 2000
Web posted at: 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT)
With his bull neck and broad shoulders, Yoshiro Mori looks more
like a rugby player than a politician. He is perceived as an
overcautious, scandal-tainted back-room dealer with no
discernible ideology, little international experience and zero
tact. In recent months, he has managed to insult Americans,
Okinawans, Osakans, AIDS sufferers and teachers. As for
political courage, even friends say he has the heart of a flea.
All of which makes Mori, 62, an ideal Prime Minister--at least
in the eyes of the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party, which
last week chose him to replace the incapacitated Keizo Obuchi at
the helm of Japan's government.
Mori's physical dynamism contrasted sharply with the dour
frailty of his predecessor, who lay in a coma last week after a
massive stroke. But the L.D.P. secretary-general was picked for
the top post mainly because of his skills as a fixer in the back
rooms of Japanese politics, where real decision making takes
place. What his faction-riddled party needs most in these
turbulent times--as the country faces a devastating volcanic
eruption in the north, economic stagnation and a crisis of
confidence--is someone who can hold things together.
Mori's first task will be to restore the public's faith in the
government, which was badly shaken by the bumbling and deceitful
handling of his predecessor's health emergency. It took 34 hours
for Obuchi aide Mikio Aoki, who briefly stepped in as interim
leader, to reveal the full extent of the Prime Minister's
illness. Whether Mori can inspire trust and move the country
along the path of badly needed financial and economic reforms
remains to be seen. His 31-year career as a party apparatchik and
former Education Minister and Trade Minister provides no evidence
of any ideological convictions. Even members of his party
struggled to find words to laud their new leader. "We don't have
any qualified candidates, so he'll have to do," said Kazuo Aichi,
an L.D.P. member of parliament.
Perhaps. But what he has most conspicuously arranged in the past
has been pork-barrel projects for his home region in western
Japan, including an unnecessary $14 billion bullet-train route.
Mori made it clear last week that he will continue the
profligate spending of his predecessor, who during his brief,
20-month tenure doled out more than $300 billion for government
projects, making him Japan's all-time biggest spendthrift. Don't
count on Mori to close the spigot. Government spending "has a
natural impact on the economy," he said last week. "Right now
the economy is slowly recovering. We want it to turn into a
full-fledged recovery."
For all Obuchi's pump-priming efforts, however, the economy has
barely begun to inch out of its decade-long doldrums. There have
been some timid signs of a recovery: the stock market is
booming, companies are restructuring, dotcom fever is starting
to catch on. But the economy slid back into a recession last
year and unemployment, once unheard of, is at an all-time high
of 4.9%. Rather than pushing for the serious structural reforms
that the country desperately needs, Mori is likely to offer more
government largesse in order to beef up his popularity during
the run-up to the parliamentary elections that must be held by
October.
Even as the comatose Obuchi remains hooked up to life-support
systems, he may turn out to be the most prominent figure in the
upcoming campaign. Mori and his party colleagues can be expected
to play shamelessly on the stricken leader's image to generate a
sympathy vote while making critics of the Obuchi government's
record look insensitive. In his first press conference last
week, Mori repeatedly invoked the name of his longtime friend
and former Waseda University classmate. "I feel like I can hear
the voice of Prime Minister Obuchi from his bed, saying 'I trust
you, so do it well,'" Mori told reporters.
Though Mori was known as a skilled debater at Waseda, he has
lately distinguished himself more for loose lips than
silver-tongued oratory. For example, he has inelegantly
described Osaka as a "spittoon" and "a dirty city that thinks
only about making money." Last January, reflecting on the
difficulties of campaigning in enemy territory, he said that
"all the farmers in the field ran away as if someone with AIDS
was knocking on their door." In February, he asserted that the
Americans had all "bought guns" in preparation for the Y2K bug
"because when electrical power fails in the U.S., the gangs and
murderers come out. Such is American society." Last month he
charged that teachers in Okinawa were communist-controlled
subversives.
Coincidentally, Okinawa will be the site of Mori's first major
international appearance when he is host of the G-8 summit in
July. That leaves him just three months to hone his diplomatic
skills and demonstrate his potential as a national leader before
he sits down with the heads of the industrial world's most
powerful countries. On that occasion, his peers will be watching
closely to see if Japan's new leader-by-default is anything more
than a successful party infighter.
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