He promised to act with the “speed of a ball of fire”. Faced with a major political crisis, the current head of government, Fumio Kishida, is in great difficulty. The reason ? A financial scandal that affects his political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD). The different factions that structure this party, which has governed the country almost without interruption since 1955, are said to have embezzled 500 million yen [3,2 millions d’euros] during fundraising events.
On December 19, Japanese prosecutors conducted searches. The first took place within Seiwakai, a powerful political group that was part of the LDP and long led by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Weakened, Kishida replaced four of his ministers to regain the trust of the population. But obviously, his “ball of fire” did not convince many people. His popularity rating has plunged to 17.1%, according to a survey carried out in mid-December by the Jiji agency. And the question arises whether he will be able to retain his mandate as president of the PLD until the end in September 2024.
For the center-left daily Asahi, the scandal “once again underlines the LDP’s outdated faction-driven culture, a deep-rooted tradition dating back to its founding in 1955.” At the time, the training was in fact structured around these entities which reflected the more or less conservative, more or less progressive currents which crossed it. The electoral system encouraged this partition, because each constituency had between three and five elected officials. Each faction wanted its representative.
To finance themselves, the factions relied on donations and strong networks. “The organizing principle that unites the PLD is not ideology, but interpersonal relationships between politicians on the one hand and between politicians and their supporters on the other”, Hiroyuki Ikeba wrote in 1995 in his thesis “The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan: its organization and decision-making process”.
Factions still weigh
This operation partly explains why this formation was able to stay in power for so long. “Without a strong ideology, the LDP can easily change its position and, for example, align itself with openly progressive policies supported by the population,” explains Rob Fahey, of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Waseda University. The party even survived resounding crises like the Recruit scandal, named after this insider trading which shook the entire Japanese political class at the end of the 1980s. Certain figures of the PLD, but also groups of The opposition, such as the Socialist Party and Komei, then benefited from the favors of Hiromasa Ezoe, president of the job offers company Recruit. The businessman had offered them shares in a subsidiary of Recruit, Cosmos, shortly before its IPO in 1986. From the first listings, the stock jumped. The gains were enormous, but the affair cost the PLD victory in the 1993 legislative elections.
Despite everything, the party had managed to reform itself. Passed in 1994, the overhaul of the electoral system made it possible to weaken the faction system by introducing the principle of single-seat constituencies. The publication of the accounts of elected officials and factions had been made compulsory, as had the disclosure of the assets of parliamentarians. Subsequently, a system of subsidizing parties through taxes was put in place and donations to politicians were prohibited.
Weakened, the factions have not disappeared. They continue, for example, to influence the choices of ministers. Above all, the reform does not apply to donations from companies and individuals during fundraising, hence the current scandal.
Can this threaten the PLD’s control over Japanese politics? The polls still give the conservative party a large lead in the face of barely audible opposition. Furthermore, recalls Rob Fahey, “political competence boils down, for most Japanese, to one thing: the LDP itself. It can be tarnished by scandals and voters can criticize its dynastic and wealthy elites, but few doubt his political competence.
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