Really odd speech by PM Abe this evening announcing that he will not be raising the consumption tax to 10%, that he wants to take this discretionary authority (to raise or not raise the tax depending upon how the economy is doing at the time) away from future PMs, and that he is calling a general election of the House of Representatives to get endorsement for this policy. He said the election is needed — even though none of the other parties is calling for him to go ahead and raise the tax, so not raising it is not an issue — because not raising it represents a deviation from the LDP platform, which I assume included the depending-upon-how-the-economy-is-doing wiggle room. In this, he somehow neglected to mention that the party platform also included a solemn pledge to reduce the number of Diet members and to beef up the social security system at the same time the consumption tax was raised to 8%, neither of which has been done. These are real deviations from the platform, but they are not deviations that he felt needed to be mentioned.
He spent a lot of time on how taxation is an essential part of democracy (or was it that democracy is an essential part of taxation) and how the people should also be consulted on taxes, even managing to invoke the American revolution in there, but all of this then implied that the people do not need to be consulted when the constitution is re-interpreted to allow collective self-defense, or when a draconian state secrets law is enacted, or when wildly unpopular nuclear power plants are restarted. Nor, apparently, does Okinawan opinion need to be consulted on constructing a new base (which construction was resoundingly opposed in the recent gubernatorial election but which the LDP says will go ahead as planned). None of these things, he implies, are nearly as important as tax policy.
And then when he was asked what level of support he would consider an endorsement, he set the bar as low as possible. If the LDP+Komei coalition does not win a majority of the seats (a near certainty), he will resign, he said. Of course, if their losses are in three-digit territory, the LDP+Komei powers may well decide he should resign even though the coalition has a majority, but that is something we will just have to wait and see.
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Like almost everyone else, I wonder why the election is being held now. But unlike many other people, I suspect it is because Abe realizes he is better at forming policy-study committees and making vague promises to “fix” this or that without describing how than he is at actually fixing anything in the popular interest. An election is a way to kick a lot of cans down the road. For example, just before he announced the election, he met with the Keidanren people and got them to promise to encourage member companies to raise wages next year. This does not mean all companies will actually raise wages enough to offset tax-induced and opportunistic price inflation, but it is the sort of “trust us. we’re working on it” gesture that Abe’s advertising team is good at and that might even convince some voters to give Abe a third chance.
So we have this election, which I think of as Abe’s do-you-love-me election and which most people think of as a monumental waste of time and money.