Noda's dilemma
To no-confidence or not to no-confidence, that is the question
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The ordinary Diet session closes on 22 June, and the endgame is increasingly focused on the question of whether Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) leader Noda Yoshihiko is willing to play his most powerful card, a no-confidence motion aimed at Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s government.
With the opposition parties holding a majority of seats in the House of Representatives, the possibility of a successful no-confidence vote – which would give Ishiba ten days to resign or call a snap election – has been a sword of Damocles hanging over the prime minister since last year’s general election.
But deploying this option is more complicated than simply counting the number of votes. With Ishiba indicating this week that, if the opposition moves to submit a no-confidence motion, he would call a snap election before the lower house could even vote on it, Ishiba has made the stakes clear. If Noda wants to oust the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from power, Ishiba will give him a chance as early as next month. However, by leaking his intentions to call a snap election, Ishiba put Noda in an uncomfortable position. If he opts not to pursue a no-confidence motion, he is effectively admitting that he is not confident in the CDP’s chances in a double election, raising questions, as Ozawa Ichirō (of course) said, about Noda’s leadership skills. But if he decides to pursue one, he risks removing all doubt about the CDP’s weakness, leading the party into a disastrous electoral defeat unnecessarily.1
The risks facing the CDP in a double election are enormous. If the party has struggled to coordinate with opposition parties in the upper house’s single-member constituencies, it is nowhere near ready to do the same in a general election at the same time. Meanwhile, despite gaining fifty-two seats in last year’s general election, there are significant questions about its electoral strength. The party only increased its gross vote total by 72,107 votes in proportional voting and actually received nearly 1.5 million fewer votes in constituency voting. The party’s support has barely budged. While Ishiba has struggled to articulate a resonant campaign message, he and the LDP may at least be able to fall back on familiar arguments about the party’s ability to navigate the country through challenging times; Noda and the CDP are laboring against the public’s allergy towards opposition parties and are also trying to develop a message that draws a contrast with both the LDP and the Democratic Party for the People (DPFP). Ironically, submitting a no-confidence motion even after he said he does not want a “political vacuum” domestically while Japan is dealing with the Trump administration, Noda would undermine what has perhaps been his most consistent message as party leader, that as a responsible, serious party the CDP can be trusted with power.
But the risks are not limited to the election outcome itself. After all, the CDP emerged from last year’s general election not only with more seats in the House of Representatives but, critically, with the chair of the lower house budget committee and other standing and ad hoc committees. These committee posts having given the CDP agenda-setting and procedural power, enabling it to extract concessions from the government and otherwise apply pressure to an Ishiba government that needs opposition votes. Naturally, controlling the government outright is better than controlling key legislative posts, but the risk of losing these posts should give Noda pause before rushing headlong into a no-confidence motion. The CDP, if it cannot match its performance last year, will not only return with fewer seats, but it will lose an important source of leverage over the Ishiba government. Unless the CDP feels confident that it can mobilize voters to turn out to elect a CDP-led government next month, it may make more sense to hold off on a no-confidence motion – keeping it available for other battles with Ishiba – and focus on contesting the upper house elections instead of a double election. After all, the worst-case scenario in an upper-house-election-only scenario is the status quo: the LDP and Kōmeitō retain control of the upper house. The worst-case scenario in a double election is that the government retakes control of both houses and deprives the opposition of its current sources of leverage (including the threat of passing a no-confidence motion).
With just over two weeks remaining in the Diet session, it is unclear how Noda will respond to this dilemma. He has said relatively little about his intentions, stating only that he will decide at the appropriate time and that he will base his decision on a holistic assessment of the Ishiba government, not a single policy area. He may well be looking for a way out of the dilemma entirely, with Asahi reporting that Noda would want to submit a no-confidence motion jointly with Ishin no Kai and the Democratic Party for the People. This may be less about Noda’s determination to move forward with a no-confidence motion than on his desire to shift the blame for not moving forward with one to other partners, particularly since Ishin no Kai may be reluctant to contest a double election after its own disappointing electoral performance last year.2 The other opposition parties, however, may not be inclined to help Noda out of his dilemma. Ultimately it may come down to how much Noda is willing to risk for another shot at the premiership.
To be sure, Ishiba’s threat may also have been aimed at his rivals in the LDP, telling them that they will not have the opportunity to use a successful no-confidence motion to try to push him out instead of calling a snap election.
Although the DPFP’s Tamaki Yūichirō has been urging Noda to submit a no-confidence motion.