• By
  • Yuka Hayashi

It’s been a bumpy enough old year for the Democratic Party of Japan already. But as the countdown toward 2011 starts, lawmakers and political pundits in Tokyo are wondering whether the ruling party can even make the new year in one piece.

Bloomberg News
Ichiro Ozawa at a news conference in October.

Tension has risen to boiling point lately in the ruling party over whether party kingpin Ichiro Ozawa should testify at a parliamentary ethics panel to explain in his own words his role in a campaign fund scandal. Indeed, the mood is so foul that some speculate Mr. Ozawa and his loyalists could even bolt from the party before the end of the year.

Katsuya Okada, secretary general and “Mr. Clean” of the DPJ, is leading the fight to bring the senior lawmaker to parliament. He has the blessing of Prime Minister Naoto Kan and chief cabinet secretary Yoshito Sengoku, whose priority now is to gather support from opposition parties to get a divided parliament functioning when a new session starts in January. The opposition have long criticized Mr. Kan for allowing Mr. Ozawa to remain largely in hiding since a citizen’s panel ordered his indictment in October. An indictment could come as early as January, according to the Japanese media.

“Our basic stance is to ask (Mr. Ozawa) to come to the ethics committee of his own will and explain his position,” Mr. Okada said Tuesday. “If that’s not possible, the party will have to make its own decision.” The committee can vote to ask Mr. Ozawa to testify, though it doesn’t have the authority to force him to do so.

Japan’s ruling Democratic Party Secretary General Katsuya Okada speaks during a news conference following a meeting with party executives, held to decide whether a parliamentary ethics panel should summon powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa to testify on a funding scandal, at the party headquarters in Tokyo Dec. 13.

The increasingly confrontational attitude of the top party officials has riled Ozawa loyalists, many of whom are freshman lawmakers who feel indebted to the DPJ veteran for their election victories. Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, a notable supporter among senior party members, has been a vocal critic. “They are talking as if they would force him to attend the ethics committee even if that meant putting a rope around his neck and dragging him there.”

There haven’t been clear indications that a departure of the Ozawa supporters is imminent. Still, some think if they were to leave, it could come before the end of the year – a deadline for registering a new political party if it wants to qualify for government subsidies in the new year.

If Mr. Ozawa abandoned the ruling party, it would be a case of déjà vu. In 1993, he left the ruling Liberal Democratic Party along with some three dozen lawmakers to form a new party called Japan Renewal Party. That set off a period of tumultuous change in Japanese politics, leading ultimately to the birth of none other than the DPJ.
