Not a small victory, but the beginning of the political breakdown

" If this ends up dissolving the House of Representatives, I don't know who I should borrow money from and that gives me a headache", murmured a general manager of the Liberal Democratic Party in Tokyo last weekend, who works as a secretary for a congressman.

Not more than 5 months have passed by since the general election in June. It is difficult to say that political funds for anybody including leaders of political factions are running smoothly. Under such circumstances anyone will back off if the dissolution of the House of Representatives is mentioned.

Hiromu Nonaka, a chief secretary of the Liberal Democratic Party , issued several threats to fringe group congressmen of two political factions, of which leaders are Koichi Kato and Taku Yamazaki respectively, to try to split them. The most effective threat was " to expel them from the Liberal Democratic Party " if they did not follow the order.

If they were expelled, the Liberal Democratic Party will not endorse them any more, which will impose difficult campaigns at the elections. Candidates with no endorsement from any political parties have less of a possibility to be elected under the system of the single-seat constituency, which allows only one person to be elected in one constituency. As a matter of course, the rural constituencies will have much greater loss than the urban ones.

Any polls showed obviously that public opinions had great expectations for Mr. Kato and Mr. Yamazaki. They expected them to drastically change the hopeless politics.

However, this loss does not mean the end of their political careers. New political change will take place again before the election of next July.

Financial instability has not been dissolved

A political analyst commented about this series of political fluctuation as follows. " There was no mistake in the timing of the political behaviors by Mr. Kato. However, he could not persist in the solidarity of his group because he did not have a capable assistant who could put the group together as well as the ability of the political fund and information skills. This indicated the decline in his political power."

No problems have been solved even if the Mori cabinet was approved. So far, the Mori administration has evidently continued to provide more factors to "sell" than to "buy" toward the stock market. However, the problem is that an attractive leader, who offers the factor to buy, has not appeared.

One thing that we need to watch closely here is the viewpoint to avoid " financial crisis ", which can happen as early as next March, one of the reasons of political behavior started by Mr. Kato.

A common mistake of both of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan lies in the idea of continuing the politics with current traditional policy.

Mr.Yasuhiro Odajima, a researcher and the Ohio correspondent of the Japan Institute of Policy Research (JIPR), points out as follows on the Japanese financial policy. "Current Japanese stock market is not appealing at all. Even the dependability of corporate financial information is not certain. It is necessary to increase the transparency of the market and bring in investors of every class. The legal system and the rules need to be separated from the Japanese standards. Then the market needs to trade with overseas markets. For instance, fraud charges in financial transactions need to be separated from the general fraud charges and the penalty should be more severe. More powerful enforcement should be given to the Japanese Securities and Exchange Commission."