Twists and turns on Ozawa's path to candidacy / Behind-the-scenes meetings, high-level intermediaries, nothing could prevent a showdown

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Prime Minister Naoto Kan will face Ichiro Ozawa in a race for party leader that may split the Democratic Party of Japan. How did the ruling party reach such a pass? Couldn't anyone have prevented this from happening?

On Tuesday afternoon, high-level members of the Kan camp--including Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Seiji Maehara--gathered at Kan's office in the No. 1 building for House of Representatives lawmakers. "For the public's sake, I couldn't agree to discuss personnel," Kan told the group.

His statement dispelled worries held by Maehara and other Kan supporters that to avoid a showdown with Ozawa, Kan might yield to pressure and appoint Ozawa and his supporters to key Cabinet and party posts.

About two hours later, Kan met with Ozawa at DPJ headquarters, but the meeting lasted only 30 minutes and no compromise was made. Kan and Ozawa immediately announced their candidacy in a race that will, in effect, elect the prime minister.

Belief that Ozawa would withdraw from the race lasted until the end, mostly because of the possibility of a "three-plus-one" leadership system--where authority would be shared by Kan, Ozawa and former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, plus Azuma Koshiishi, head of the DPJ House of Councillors caucus. The four-person leadership scheme was first proposed by Ozawa. "To unite the party, I'd prefer the three-plus-one system," he said.

Koshiishi conveyed Ozawa's idea to Kan on Monday, asking if the prime minister could accept such a system. Kan reportedly answered that he could. Since both Kan and Hatoyama agreed to accept the three-plus-one system when they met that night, hopes that a party rift could be averted grew.

However, it turned out that even though Kan and Ozawa were in the same bed, they were having different dreams.

Kan told a senior supporter Tuesday that the shared leadership idea he agreed to was like a "council of advisers" that does not hold real power and that he would go to for advice.

Ozawa, on the other hand, thought the system would be like a supreme leaders council, holding veto power over party management, policy matters and financial issues.

When Ozawa demanded posts in exchange for not running in the presidential race, Kan said he could not agree.

"If the four of us were to meet [to discuss party leadership], we would be criticized for making a backroom deal. It's better if I meet with Mr. Ozawa one-on-one," Kan was quoted as saying.

On Tuesday morning, Kan refused to attend a three-plus-one meeting despite his agreement to the idea the previous night. Hatoyama, who served as a mediator between Kan and Ozawa, reportedly grumbled about the failure of his intermediary efforts.

Undeniably, Hatoyama's actions amplified chaos in the party just three months after the former prime minister stepped down. A middle-ranking DPJ lawmaker denounced Hatoyama's meddling, saying he was not the right person to mediate "because he only speaks an extraterrestrial language."

Plotting from the get-go

Ozawa began exploring how to oust Kan in the upcoming DPJ election immediately after July's upper house poll. In early August, Ozawa told one of his aides, "It'll be necessary to unseat Kan in September, no matter if I'm the one who runs or not."

"After Kan brought up a hike in the consumption tax and tried to revise the manifesto from last year's lower house election, the change of government we achieved last year lost some of its meaning," Ozawa said.

In an Aug. 24 meeting with Mitsuru Sakurai, deputy chair of the DPJ's Policy Research Committee and an upper house lawmaker who reportedly is not close to Ozawa, the former secretary general blatantly criticized Kan, saying: "The government is worse now than before the DPJ came to power. The Kan administration has been won over by bureaucrats."

Despite Ozawa's resolution to oust Kan, he had some reservations about running in the presidential race. On Aug. 25, Ozawa visited Keishu Tanaka, a lower house member belonging to a DPJ group of former Democratic Socialist Party members, at his office in the No. 2 building for lower house members.

Tanaka was quoted as telling Ozawa: "You shouldn't run this time. [Even if you win] you'll be grilled at Budget Committee sessions over the political funds scandal. If a censure motion is passed [by the opposition-controlled upper chamber], you'll be forced to dissolve the lower house."

Ozawa listened to Tanaka's advice and then asked him if his group could field a presidential candidate.

He then suggested a certain lawmaker and asked Tanaka to encourage his group to field that DPJ lawmaker in the race.

Eventually, the plan failed to get off the ground because the lawmaker refused to run in the race.

Apart from Ozawa's maneuvering, his supporters ramped up their efforts to get him to run as a candidate. About 50 DPJ lawmakers of Ozawa's group, including party Vice President Kenji Yamaoka, visited Ozawa at his office on Aug. 25 to ask him to decide on his candidacy.

One group member said, "Ozawa's political life will end if he doesn't throw his hat in the ring."

Ozawa's supporters pushed him to the point of no return, leading him to express his intention to seek the DPJ presidency on Aug. 26. But Ozawa's candidacy was still uncertain, as he told a DPJ lawmaker the following day, "Nobody knows what a day will bring."

While the possibility of an all-out fight between Kan and Ozawa grew, some in the DPJ tried to prevent the possibility of a party rupture.

The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), the nation's largest trade union and a major supporter of the DPJ, moved behind the scenes to work on both Kan and Ozawa. Rengo Chairman Nobuaki Koga phoned an aide close to Kan, urging him to compromise. "There must be something Kan can concede on," Koga said.

Koga also worked on Kazuo Inamori, honorary chairman of Kyocera Corp. and special adviser to the Cabinet, to try to ease intraparty friction. Inamori is said to have some influence over Ozawa. On Monday, Inamori dined with Hatoyama, asking the former prime minister to try harder to prevent a showdown.

Another Rengo leader phoned Ozawa on Monday, asking if he would run in the race. Ozawa was quoted as saying wryly, "Some young lawmakers pushed me so enthusiastically, I felt I couldn't stop it."

Ozawa also emphasized his resolve, saying, "It's difficult to back down unless Mr. Kan makes some concessions to achieve party unity."

Kan fails to rid DPJ of Ozawa

Kan had been reaching out to Ozawa in search of a compromise, sources said.

In an apparent attempt to reinforce their alliance, the Ozawa group brought 150 DPJ lawmakers together at a seminar held by a intraparty group led by Hatoyama in Karuizawamachi, Nagano Prefecture, on Aug. 19.

Satoshi Arai, state minister in charge of national policy who is close to Kan, attended the seminar to contact Hatoyama and Koshiishi.

Arai was convinced that only Hatoyama or Koshiishi could mediate between Kan and Ozawa. According to sources, Kan gave Arai his blessing to attend the seminar.

Some participants said Hatoyama gave Arai the cold shoulder at the seminar, but Ozawa readily agreed to have his picture taken with Arai.

Kan seemed pleased when he saw the snap of Arai and Ozawa, saying it "symbolized a united party," the sources said.

In a bid to prevent the simmering tensions from flaring into all-out intraparty conflict, Kan turned to Hatoyama as his go-between with Ozawa.

This alarmed Maehara and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, high-profile DPJ lawmakers who had been vocal in calling for Ozawa's influence in the party to be neutralized.

At the Prime Minister's Office on Monday, Maehara reportedly tried to persuade Kan not to meet with Ozawa if the agenda including making deals on party personnel matters. Maehara apparently was concerned the two might agree to let Ozawa assume a key post in the party and eject Sengoku and Yukio Edano, DPJ secretary general, from their positions.

DPJ members close to Sengoku say he has told them he is prepared to resign if necessary. But other DPJ executives, such as Edano and Yoko Komiyama, chairwoman of the DPJ Financial Committee, are unwilling to concede an inch to Ozawa.

"We're finished if we give in to Ozawa's demands," one executive reportedly said to Kan. "We shouldn't replace the chief cabinet secretary."

A mudslinging contest

A weekly magazine recently carried articles spelling out the DPJ's questionable money management practices when Ozawa led the party. Members of the Ozawa group suspect a current DPJ executive leaked the potentially damaging information to the magazine.

Questions also have been raised over the use of money by a political group connected to Sengoku's fund management body. A source close to Sengoku suggested the revelation was "a counterattack by the Ozawa side."

The upcoming DPJ presidential race has deteriorated into what party policy chief Koichiro Gemba, who doubles as state minister in charge of civil service reform, called a "mudslinging contest." Some DPJ members apparently already have grown weary of the leadership scrap.

After hearing that Kan and Ozawa would meet Tuesday afternoon, Koshiishi, who along with Hatoyama served as a mediator between the two men, became convinced that a contested party presidential election could be averted. Koshiishi apparently believed the talks would be fruitful as long as Kan agreed to build party unity under the three-plus-one system.

However, his confidence turned out to be misplaced.

"Why did Kan not stick to his guns?" Koshiishi said as he watched Ozawa's televised press conference Tuesday evening, according to sources.

The Kan camp is bracing for a bruising election battle. Sengoku reportedly told those close to him, "If the prime minister continues to fight like this, he'll be in for a tough race."