Confusion in Japan over confidence vote

Confusion in Japan over confidence vote
REUTERS

TOKYO, NOV 20: Confusion reigned in Japan’s Parliament on Monday after reformist rivals to Japan’s unpopular Prime Minister, Yoshiro Mori, flip-flopped on whether to vote in favour of a no-confidence motion in his government.

Koichi Kato, a former executive of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), at first backed off from a threat to support the motion, saying he would abstain along with his ally, Taku Yamasaki, following 11th-hour backroom negotiations.Minutes later he announced at a news conference that the pair would support the motion, sparking pandemonium among the 62 members of their two factions in the multi-group LDP.

After being mobbed by supporters who urged him not to vote alone for the motion proposed by four Opposition parties, Kato Left for parliament, meaning that the outcome of the vote in the 480-member powerful Lower House was uncertain.Without substantial support from Kato’s faction and that of his ally, the motion faces defeat.

Talk of a last-minute deal had raised questions over whether the two sides had reached a compromise that would result in Mori’s resignation, possibly after a supplementary budget passes parliament in early December. Kato had said he would not vote for the motion if he received assurances that Mori would step down at an early date.

Even if the LDP avoids a split, some analysts say the party that has ruled Japan almost without interruption for nearly half a century and has come to symbolise a stagnant ‘‘Old Japan’’ may be hollowed out due to public disgust with its secretive, scandal-tainted ways and pork-barrel policies.

The stakes have been high and party barons spent hours shuttered behind closed-doors negotiating a deal to stave off defeat. If the no-confidence vote passes, Mori has 10 days either to resign or to call a general election.

Speculation had been rife that Mori might step down ahead of the vote to avoid a possibly fatal split in the party. He voiced determination to survive the greatest threat to hisseven-month premiership. ‘‘We are in a situation where we must not create a political vacuum,’’ said Mori, tapped for the top job by party elders in April after his predecessor suffered a fatal stroke.

Kato has said he wants to topple Mori to revive the LDP and wean it from the pork-barrel spending that has Left Japan with the worst public debt among advance nations, though he adds he would not tighten fiscal policy drastically soon. The showdown in Parliament had looked too close to call until the last minute.

The 190-member Opposition cannot pass the motion alone and needs support from Kato and his allies in the 480-seat Lower House. The measure needs half the votes cast to be enacted.

More than a dozen legislators in the faction led by Kato, who has mounted his rebellion from within Mori’s own dominant LDP, had decided to support the prime minister, domestic media said.