The Fat Lady is about to join in (Japan's politics)

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The Fat Lady

The portrait of the Fat Lady is the door to Gryffindor Tower, which is hidden behind her painting. She will open it (sometimes grudgingly) when the correct password is uttered. She is often upset after being awakened, and is often seen drunk with her best friend, Violet. The Fat Lady has no other known name, and it is unknown whether she is supposed to represent a real person. In Philosopher's Stone, she leaves her portrait in the middle of the night, locking Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville out of Gryffindor Tower. In Prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius slashes the Fat Lady’s portrait and it is some time before she dares to guard Gryffindor Tower again. After her portrait was restored, she requested protection next time someone tries to attack her portrait. Thus, two security trolls were hired.

In the first film the Fat Lady is played by the late Elizabeth Spriggs. She does not appear in the second film. In the third film she is played by Dawn French. She does not appear in the fourth or fifth films.)

Japan's politics

The Fat Lady is about to join in

Jan 29th 2009 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

Even its own members reckon Japan’s ruling LDP faces annihilation

AFP

THE wave which first broke in earnest over Japan’s economy towards the end of last year now looks set to sweep away a political system dominated for half a century of almost unbroken power by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). That, at least, is now the view of parliamentarians of all stripes. This week, a poll by the Nikkei newspaper saw the government’s approval rating fall to 19%, abjectly low. Morbid LDP members admit that a party that has seen four prime ministers in as many years is not just bereft of ideas but has lost the stomach for a fight. The government, they say, will plop into the lap of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in an election that the prime minister, Taro Aso (pictured above), has to call by September.

Mr Aso deserves a scintilla of credit for trying. Though he assembled a cabinet of exceptional mediocrity last September, he expected to call a snap election while his approval ratings were still fairly high. Mr Aso was then faster than most to grasp the severity of the global slowdown, and that Japan, its economy driven by exports, would be disproportionately hit. More than once he has put off calling an election in order to confront the slowdown. He saw through stimulus measures and loan guarantees inherited from his predecessor. He announced a second stimulus, including a ¥2 trillion ($22 billion) cash handout to households. And he declared that nothing so frivolous as an election would disrupt preparations for the full budget for the fiscal year that begins in April, in which the economy would get another boost. This was to be Mr Aso’s three-stage rocket.

It has turned out to be a damp squib. The new spending is not large, yet promoting the proposals has consumed his political capital. For a start, instead of pushing the second stimulus through the Diet (parliament) at once, Mr Aso put it off until the session that began in January, so as not to divert energies from the annual budgeting ritual. Yet that has given more time for the public to turn against the handout as a gimmick, and for the opposition to make hay. Citing the handout, one prominent LDP member, Yoshimi Watanabe, a former financial-services minister who has long been unhappy about the lack of administrative and supply-side reforms, stomped out of the party on January 13th.

Mr Watanabe’s departure set off speculation about whether civil war within the LDP was about to break out into the open, with defections to a new political force. If only in this respect, the scale of Japan’s slump benefits Mr Aso for now, since it has stilled such a rebellion. The most powerful critic of the LDP’s lack of reform zeal, Hidenao Nakagawa, a former party secretary-general, now says that political realignment must happen only when voters demand a clearer direction. He will not, he says, be the one to fire the assassin’s shot at Sarajevo. And Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a former chief cabinet secretary, has not accepted Mr Watanabe’s entreaties to join him. Rather, Mr Shiozaki says, he and a few colleagues will push for a new stimulus package worth ¥10 trillion—this time tied to changes in highly regulated areas such as health care, education and agriculture.

Potential rebels share two other calculations. Mr Aso might yet bow out, allowing one more boundlessly self-regarding buggins to contest the next election for the LDP. The second is that as the chances rise of an outright victory by the DPJ in the next election, so the leverage of any third political force diminishes. A wholesale political realignment in Japan may have to wait until the DPJ attains office and stumbles.

In the meantime, says Tadamori Oshima, the LDP’s Diet-affairs chief in the lower house, the odds of Mr Aso’s passing his various packages have shortened. On January 27th the second stimulus package was bulldozed through. Until recently, a move led by Mr Nakagawa and Mr Shiozaki looked as if it might derail passage of the next fiscal year’s budget. To pass enabling legislation, the ruling coalition must use its “supermajority” in the lower house to override the opposition-controlled upper house. But the rebels had objected to language about the need to raise the consumption (sales) tax in 2011 in order to finance social welfare. The rebels backed down after it was made more explicit that the rise hinged not just on economic recovery, but on reducing the power of the bureaucracy. Mr Oshima now says he is certain that the supermajority, without which Mr Aso would have to resign, will hold.

This brings only a brief respite for the prime minister. The economy is worsening fast: in December year-on-year exports fell by 35%; surveys of consumer confidence are at all-time lows; while the central bank talks of an economic “emergency”. This week, the government announced convoluted plans for public funds to be used to buy shares in cash-strapped smaller companies. Though it has not been announced, it also wants to force big city banks to take public-capital injections, with no strings attached, rather than risk sending the stockmarket down further by issuing fresh shares. If Mr Aso plans further stimulus packages, publicising them now might only heighten the tooth-pulling pain of passing the current measures.

In his policy speech to the Diet on January 28th, the prime minister promised to bring Japan out of recession before the rest of the world, yet he gave few clues as to how. Admittedly, he expounded on the need for sweeping changes to the tax system, including raising the consumption tax. By mentioning the tax, Mr Aso meant to signal his commitment to responsible politics. Yet nothing he said hinted at tough structural changes to promote growth. Drained of influence and written off by his own party, a single weapon remains with Mr Aso: when to dissolve the Diet and call the election. As to when he will do that, says Mr Oshima, probably the prime minister’s closest and most important ally, only Mr Aso and God know.