FEATURE-Wary voters in south Japan may be ready for change

Published: 09 Aug 2009 20:22:08 PST

OMUTA, Japan, Aug 10 - Chiyoka Okazaki has been a staunch backer of Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for most of her adult life. Not any more.

Instead, she is working ahead of an Aug. 30 election to help the main opposition candidate beat LDP lawmaker Makoto Koga, who for three decades has wooed voters with tax money to build roads and bridges in the mountainous district of Fukuoka, 1,000 km (600 miles) south of Tokyo.

Critics say such pork-barrel projects are a waste of funds that could be better spent on other needs from education to health care and pensions in Japan's rapidly ageing society.

"The era for building bridges is over," Okazaki, 65, said at a gathering of women supporting opposition Democratic Party candidate Kuniyoshi Noda over the weekend.

"We need to spend money on things like education. That's the issue for the future," added Okazaki, whose husband even headed a local support group for Koga until two years ago.

Opinion polls show the opposition Democratic Party has a good shot at ousting the LDP, which during a half-century of almost unbroken rule built a well-oiled machine by using public works projects and subsidies to win votes from groups ranging from businesses and farmers to doctors and postmasters.

Few symbolise that old-style machine better than Koga, 69, a former transport minister who has been elected to parliament's lower house nine times since first winning a seat in 1980.

"What he's been saying is, 'I'm going to build this, I'm going to build that'." It's 100 percent organised votes," said Steven Reed, a political scientist at Tokyo's Chuo University.

"There was never even a hint at anything other than the reason people should vote for him is that he brings goodies to the district."

Koga's approach is apparent at his campaign office in the town of Yame, an hour's drive from the former mining city of Omuta and famed for locally grown green tea.

Plastered on a wall near the office entrance were rows of letters from company presidents, business groups and local chapters of the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association that Koga heads, all supporting his bid for a 10th term.

RUSTING MACHINE?

But in Fukuoka, as elsewhere throughout Japan, the LDP machine has been rusting as group cohesiveness unravels and Japan's heavy debt load limits funds for public works.

"It used to be if the (company) president said 'Vote this way,' everyone would," said one Koga backer. "Now, one letter might mean just one vote from the president himself."

Market-friendly reforms such as deregulation pushed by charismatic Junichiro Koizumi, who led the LDP to a huge election win in 2005, have also created a backlash against the LDP, although Koga himself was and remains an ardent Koizumi critic.

"Reform is fine, but what Koizumi did was a failure," said Tomoharu Tada, 54, a former miner who now drives a taxi.

"He said, 'No pain, no gain', but it wasn't pain, it was a gaping wound."

With public anxiety growing about how Japan will cope with a shrinking, greying population and worries about creaking pension and health care systems, promises of bridges to nowhere no longer impress many voters, even in Koga's district.

"I definitely want the Democrats to win," said Tadakazu Koyonagi, 57, after accepting a business-card from Noda at a local festival as a group of "taiko" drummers performed.

"What Koga has done hasn't helped us. Our lives have just got tougher and the profits went only to a few," said Koyonagi, who said he was out of a regular job.

"I used to back the LDP, but this time people want tax money used for childcare, education and care for the elderly."

Hoping to tap such concerns, the Democrats promise more money for households, rather than breaks for businesses.

"Ordinarily, Koga ought to beat someone like me hands down, considering how much money he has brought to the district," Noda said, wolfing down a box lunch before riding around in a campaign van seeking votes by blaring his slogans through a loudspeaker.

"But voters are looking at things from a different perspective now," said Noda, a former secretary to Koga who went his own way in 1993.

"They've begun to realise that the flip side of all that money was that only special interests benefited."

TIME FOR A CHANGE?

To be sure, the lure of personal and local ties cultivated over decades combined with the promise of jobs linked to public works remains strong in this fundamentally conservative district.

"I don't think the LDP is doing a good job, but I work in construction and I need a job," said 32-year-old Tsumoto Kurata.

"The Democrats say they'll provide child allowances, but if they win, I'll have less work," said the father of two, referring to a key opposition party campaign pledge.

Koga's campaign team says the nine-term lawmaker is facing one of the toughest battles of his career.

"He has always stressed the need to improve local infrastructure ... but now that is criticised as wasteful spending," said a Koga aide, Satoshi Fujimaru.

If Noda does win, it will hardly be due to a groundswell of enthusiasm for the decade-old Democratic Party, an amalgam of former LDP members, ex-socialists and younger conservatives.

Some wonder if the opposition can keep its spending promises while holding to a vow not to raise the 5 percent sales tax for four years despite Japan's poor public finances.

"The Democrats say really attractive things but I worry they can't accomplish them without raising taxes," said 27-year-old Kenichi Ota, shopping with his wife and 18-month old son.

Still, traditionally risk-averse Japanese voters just might be ready to give change a chance, even in conservative Fukuoka.

"It's not that the Democrats are so good, but it's time for a change and a change in generation," said Tada, the taxi-driver.

"Young politicians beat LDP veterans in the Tokyo assembly election," he said, referring to a ruling party defeat in a poll last month. "I think that wind is blowing here, too."