Japan: Potent protests

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

IN A country that thinks ill of its political classes, support for Shinzo Abe has remained uncannily high since he came to office a year ago in his second stint as Japan’s prime minister. People approve of him, especially his strategy of dragging the economy out of deflation and low growth. But on December 6th the government rammed through the Diet an unpopular law that greatly increases the penalties for leaking (widely defined) state secrets. The cabinet’s approval ratings tumbled. Mr Abe, who fell from power in 2007 after a series of blunders, has for the first time lost some of his shine since his comeback.

The final vote on the bill in the Diet’s upper house came just after China declared a new air-defence zone in the East China Sea covering uninhabited islands controlled by Japan. That bolstered Mr Abe’s argument that Japan needs stricter rules on secrecy to strengthen national security. America, its chief ally, has long complained that Japanese officials and servicemen let slip too much secret information. Punishments for leaking important state secrets will be increased, from a year in prison now to a maximum of ten years. Public opposition has been fierce, from freedom-of-information advocates to newspapers fearing being muzzled.

The government of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) strong-armed the bill through the session of the diet that has just ended, including by sacking opposition heads of committees. It all but dispensed with public consultation. The Japan Restoration Party, which had co-sponsored the bill, abstained from voting as a protest against the haste. Another co-sponsor, Your Party, looks in danger of splitting over the bill (though intraparty tensions had been building before it).

In several polls Mr Abe’s ratings have tumbled by around ten percentage points since a month ago, to below 50%. They remain relatively high for a Japanese prime minister, but a further fall could spell trouble. With the law safely passed, Mr Abe this week admitted that he should have explained its contents more carefully. The law does not come into effect for another year. The government hopes opposition will die down. Most of the public, it reckons, accepts the need to strengthen national security in an increasingly tense region.

Yet opposition comes not only from left-leaning groups but also from the mainstream. An association of doctors and dentists—staunchly conservative folk—banded together to hold a press conference to protest against the bill on December 5th. A group of 31 academics calls it “the largest-ever danger to democracy in post-war Japan”. Over 250 film-makers, actors and writers, including Hayao Miyazaki, a celebrated animator, have come together over the law. Four-fifths of Japanese polled by Kyodo, a news agency, say they want the draconian law revised or scrapped.

Had it wanted to, the government could have done much more to dampen criticism. It took until the final stages of the bill’s passage for the government to promise any independent oversight of what may be ruled to be a state secret. Ministers disagreed in public over the scope of the definition of secrecy, causing further alarm. A set of guidelines was proposed on how journalists could report without running foul of the law—and then the idea was retracted. The LDP’s secretary-general, Shigeru Ishiba, made matters worse when in a blog he compared protesters to terrorists.

For now Mr Abe is likely to tack swiftly back to emphasise his economic agenda. But he also has plans next year to nudge Japan away from its post-war pacifist stance, with a reinterpretation of the constitution to allow the armed forces to come to the aid of allies under attack. Beyond that, Mr Abe’s most cherished wish remains to rewrite the liberal constitution which America wrote for Japan in 1946 in favour of something a lot more conservative and backward-looking. Like his illiberal secrecy law, any such moves may do little for his popularity.

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