Summary

The largest opposition party,the New Frontier Party, was dissolved and divided into several parties. This dissolution of the New Frontier Party is accelerating the move to change the framework of the coalition government, which consists of the Liberal Democratic Party,the New Party Sakigake and the Social Democratic Party.

Among the parties involved in the dissolution of the New Frontier Party,the Taiyo Party (led by the former Prime minister,Tsutomu Hata), the People's Voice Party (led by the former Director-General of the Prime Minister's office, Michihiko Kano), and the From Five Party (led by the former Prime Minister, Morihiro Hosokawa) will form a new party and create the opposing block against the Liberal Part(led by the former head of the New Frontier Party, Ichirou Ozawa).

In addition, the New Party You-ai (former Japan Democratic Socialist Party), and the New Peace Party (former Ko-mei Party) came back to the political stage under the support of labor unions and organizations.

The Hashimoto Cabinet had made policy adjustments with the New Frontier Party and the Democratic Party of Japan in order to secure majority seats in the Diet which is necessary to pass bills in both the House of Councilors.

However, by the dissolution of the New Frontier Party, new parties formed small powers and partly affiliation became possible for both the governing and opposing parties.

As a result, within the current coalition government, the roles played by small parties like the Social Democratic Party and the New Party Sakigake will be questioned.

From now on, in line with the power struggle within the LDP, political rearrangement will further accelerate.

Will major reforms including the industrial reform and the deregulation make progress with the acceleration of the political rearrangement?

Except for some blocs, the opposing parties take the form of association of each diet member, and do not have strong coherence.

In addition, if we predict the future government movement as well as the policies which will be hammered out by the opposing and the governing parties, it would be difficult to expect the drastic deregulation.

On top of that, with respect to the policy for financial sector, we will be forced to adopt the policies proposed mainly by the LDP members.

A former government official confidently said about the current Japanese financial crisis as follows:"We will not face much difficulties because Japanese are performing excellently.There is nothing for us to worry about."
Whether we like it or not, do we have to adopt the policies laid down by government officials for a while?

We can say that, in order to avoid the ironic situation where the accelerated rearrangement of political map hinders the administrative reforms and deregulation, information disclosure in politics is necessary.

Recently, increasing number of people are turning to support the Communist Party because there is not much options. In order to get rid of the anxiety about Japanese politics both at home and abroad, and to grasp those people who do not have particular supporting parties,strong leadership is required for politicians as well as their sincere attitude by which they does not betray people's trust.